372 research outputs found

    Optimising digital nature for wellbeing

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    The global burdens of negative psychological states such as stress, anxiety, and burnout represent a growing public health concern. As the incidence of these conditions has risen so too has awareness that natural environments might provide cognitive and affective benefits. Yet unrelenting urbanisation, unprecedented species extinction, and rampant ecological degradation are fostering a creeping extinction of experience, straining the links between people and planet. In an increasingly technologically mediated world, growing emphasis is being placed on how digital forms of nature could impact health. Understanding how simulated contact with the natural world might be optimised for positive wellbeing outcomes is vital if ‘virtual nature’ is to be used as a therapeutic tool. This thesis consists of three original studies – conducted with large samples and as part of national broadcast initiatives – that aimed to address this burgeoning need. We first investigated nuances in the way natural soundscapes are experienced. Through an award-winning collaboration with the BBC Natural History Unit, a novel podcast series and experiment generated responses from 7,596 participants. Results indicated how the composition of nature-based soundscapes can affect their restorative potential, demonstrated the crucial role that memories play in these relationships, and suggested that appraisals of restoration can exert an important mediating effect on pro-environmental behaviour. Next, a similar level of granularity was applied to landscape aesthetics. An online experiment probed how ephemeral features such as sunrise, sunsets, and storms can impact appraisals of virtual environments. Data from 2,509 people supported the familiar urban-nature dichotomy yet revealed substantial momentary and diurnal heterogeneity in measures of beauty and awe. Changes in these metrics also partially mediated participants’ willingness to pay to visit these locations in the ‘real world’. Partnering again with the BBC on a multi-platform broadcast initiative called Soundscapes for Wellbeing, our third experiment assessed how the visual and acoustic elements of a digital nature experience, including music, might influence viewer emotions. Analyses from 7,636 respondents suggested that whilst music could enhance high arousal feelings such as excitement, natural sounds were integral to eliciting restoration, calmness, awe, and nostalgia. Again, these data revealed a substantial moderating effect of memories, underlining the importance of lived experiences in determining outcomes. Taken together, these findings reveal important distinctions in the way natural soundscapes are perceived, demonstrate the potential for both ephemeral features and natural sounds to elicit the complex emotions of awe and nostalgia, and highlight the profound moderating effects of personal memories. Future work might focus on expanding understanding of how awe, nostalgia, and memories could represent a hitherto under-recognised depth to the therapeutic potential of encounters with nature in both virtual and real settings.Wellcome Trus

    Designing for self-transcendent experiences in virtual reality

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    This thesis contributes to Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research with a focus on the design of immersive experiences that support self-transcendence. Self-transcendence is defined as a decrease in a sense of self and a increase in unity with the world. It can change what individuals know and value, their perspective on the world and life, evolving them as a grown person. Consequently, self-transcendence is gaining attention in Psychology, Philosophy, and Neuroscience. But, we are still far from understanding the complex phenomenological and neurocognitive aspects of self-transcendence, as well as its implications for individual growth and psychological well-being. In reviewing the methods for studying self-transcendence, we found differing conceptual models determine different ways for understanding and studying self-transcendence. Understanding self-transcendence is made especially challenging because of its ineffable qualities and extraordinary conditions in which it takes place. For that reason, researchers have began to look at technological solutions for both eliciting self-transcendence to better study it under controlled and replicable conditions as well as giving people greater access to the experience. We reviewed immersive, interactive technologies that aim to support positive experiences such as self-transcendence and extracted a set of design considerations that were prevalent across experiences. We then explored two different focuses of self-transcendence: awe and lucid dreaming. First, we took an existing VR experience designed specifically to support the self-transcendent experience of awe and looked at how the mindset and physical setting surrounding that VR experience might better support the experience of and accommodation of awe. Second, we delved deep into lucid dreaming to better understand the aspects that could help inform the design of an immersive experience that supports self-transcendence. We put those design ideas into practice by developing a neurofeedback system that aims to support lucid dreaming practices in an immersive experience. Through these review papers and design explorations, we contribute to the understanding of how one might design and evaluate immersive technological experiences that support varieties of self-transcendence. We hope to inspire more work in this area that holds promise in better understanding human nature and living our best lives

    A Framework of Distinct Musical Chills: Theoretical, Causal, and Conceptual Evidence

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    The phenomenon of musical chills has attracted extensive attention in previous music and emotion research, correlating the experience with musical structure, psychoacoustics parameters, individual differences in listeners, and the listening situation. However, there are three crucial limitations in the literature: 1) The emotional characteristics of musical chills have not been explored, and are poorly understood; 2) musical chills have never been causally manipulated, and no theories have been tested; and 3) it is unclear whether chills are a unified psychological construct, or a set of distinct experiences, distinguished at the levels of subjective feeling, psychophysiological response, individual differences, and underlying psychological induction mechanisms. Across five studies, ranging from qualitative surveys to experimental manipulations of musical chills, these limitations were addressed in the current thesis, with results suggesting firstly that musical chills are often mixed emotional experiences, described as moving, bittersweet and intense; secondly, that musical chills can be manipulated, and corresponding theories tested, with a novel experimental paradigm, by removing key sections in a piece or changing psychoacoustic parameters such as loudness and brightness; finally, that there are likely distinct types of chills experiences, which across multimedia are linked to both the affective dimension of valence and individual differences such as trait empathy, and with music through mechanisms of fear and vigilance on the one hand, and social bonding on the other. The studies and results are discussed in terms of two categories of musical chills experiences, culminating in a preliminary Distinct Musical Chills Framework, producing a series of testable hypotheses for future empirical work, and a comprehensive research agenda for the field moving forward

    The Perception/Action loop: A Study on the Bandwidth of Human Perception and on Natural Human Computer Interaction for Immersive Virtual Reality Applications

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    Virtual Reality (VR) is an innovating technology which, in the last decade, has had a widespread success, mainly thanks to the release of low cost devices, which have contributed to the diversification of its domains of application. In particular, the current work mainly focuses on the general mechanisms underling perception/action loop in VR, in order to improve the design and implementation of applications for training and simulation in immersive VR, especially in the context of Industry 4.0 and the medical field. On the one hand, we want to understand how humans gather and process all the information presented in a virtual environment, through the evaluation of the visual system bandwidth. On the other hand, since interface has to be a sort of transparent layer allowing trainees to accomplish a task without directing any cognitive effort on the interaction itself, we compare two state of the art solutions for selection and manipulation tasks, a touchful one, the HTC Vive controllers, and a touchless vision-based one, the Leap Motion. To this aim we have developed ad hoc frameworks and methodologies. The software frameworks consist in the creation of VR scenarios, where the experimenter can choose the modality of interaction and the headset to be used and set experimental parameters, guaranteeing experiments repeatability and controlled conditions. The methodology includes the evaluation of performance, user experience and preferences, considering both quantitative and qualitative metrics derived from the collection and the analysis of heterogeneous data, as physiological and inertial sensors measurements, timing and self-assessment questionnaires. In general, VR has been found to be a powerful tool able to simulate specific situations in a realistic and involving way, eliciting user\u2019s sense of presence, without causing severe cybersickness, at least when interaction is limited to the peripersonal and near-action space. Moreover, when designing a VR application, it is possible to manipulate its features in order to trigger or avoid triggering specific emotions and voluntarily create potentially stressful or relaxing situations. Considering the ability of trainees to perceive and process information presented in an immersive virtual environment, results show that, when people are given enough time to build a gist of the scene, they are able to recognize a change with 0.75 accuracy when up to 8 elements are in the scene. For interaction, instead, when selection and manipulation tasks do not require fine movements, controllers and Leap Motion ensure comparable performance; whereas, when tasks are complex, the first solution turns out to be more stable and efficient, also because visual and audio feedback, provided as a substitute of the haptic one, does not substantially contribute to improve performance in the touchless case

    Investigating positive and threat-based awe in natural and built environments

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    Staggeringly immense or beautiful awe-inspiring structures, such as religious monumental architecture, have long been important to human culture and society. With the emerging psychological literature on awe, a nascent avenue of research is beginning to uncover specific psychosocial and physiological effects of feeling awe through architecture. Most psychological work relies on nature imagery to evoke awe; yet architecturally-induced awe, which is studied very little, has enormous implications for how awe-eliciting architecture—such as cultural and religious sites—facilitate their sociocultural functions through built form. Besides the awe-inducing stimulus, the specific type of awe elicited also has potential to produce different effects. Many positive effects associated with feeling awe have been demonstrated empirically, including increased prosocial behavior, increased feelings of connection to others, and enhanced physical health through lower levels of proinflammatory cytokines. Recent work has turned to the darker side of awe, investigating effects of feeling threat-based awe, or awe elicited through a threatening stimulus. Although both positive and threat-based awe result in a smaller sense of self, threat-based awe is associated with greater feelings of powerlessness and fear than positive awe. Thus, we hypothesize that awe-inspiring environments may have distinct effects based on whether they induce positive awe or threat-based awe, as well as whether the environment is natural or built. Specifically, we predict that while positive awe will facilitate feelings of universality and integration into larger groups (e.g., the world), threat-based awe will promote social connection to smaller social groups (e.g., one’s community). We further predict that this effect will be more pronounced for architectural environments, which have inherent social meaning, compared to natural environments. Across three online studies, we explore effects of positive and threat-based awe elicited through nature and architecture. Study 1 (N = 116) uses videos of natural phenomena used in previous work to replicate previous findings on positive and threat-based awe: We show that threat-based awe leads to greater feelings of powerlessness and fear than positive awe, and that both positive and threat-based awe result in a smaller perceived self-size than no awe. Study 2 (N = 100) extends these findings to architectural environments chosen to elicit positive and threat-based awe. While both awe conditions in Study 2 led to a smaller perceived self-size than the control condition as predicted, the architectural video meant to elicit threat-based awe elicited positive awe for most participants. Because we failed to elicit threat-based awe with architectural stimuli in Study 2, Study 3 (N = 85) compared only effects of positive awe elicited through natural and architectural environments on feelings of universality and identification with others. We find that both natural and architecturally induced positive awe similarly promote feelings of universality and connection with people all over the world, compared to a control condition. This research expands our understanding of how we respond to beautiful and threatening awe-evoking environments, from ancient monumental structures and natural phenomena to the supertall skyscrapers and natural disasters that are becoming increasingly common. This research furthermore helps us understand what awe-related effects demonstrated in cognitive science will have implications for architectural design

    Evoked emotional responses in the performance practices of selected Yorùbá dùndún ensembles

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    The study aims to investigate and describe the communication of emotion through dùndún music of the Yorùbá ethnic group of Nigeria. The two-pronged focus is on (a) the strategies that dùndún performers employ to potentially arouse emotions in their listeners, and (b) the responses elicited in the listeners. The study is situated in the field of music psychology, while taking into consideration the socio-cultural background and belief systems of the Yorùbá. A mixed methodology combining primarily qualitative with an element of a quantitative approach (QUAL→quan) is adopted within a convergent design. Data from dùndún musicians and listeners were collected through observation, semi-structured interviews as well as a short questionnaire-based survey that consisted of open and closed-ended questions. Two field trips were undertaken to six towns: Igbó-Ọrà, Ìlọra, Ẹdẹ, Òṣogbo, Ìpetumodù and Òỵ ó ̣located within south-west Nigeria. Qualitative analysis consisting of thick description in addition to a grounded theory approach was used to generate themes from the data, and the findings were also derived from a small-scale quantitative component. Concepts and theories around emotions from relevant literature are combined with the findings of the study to explain emotional communication in dùndún music. Data collected were used to answer the research questions in particular and contribute to the broad body of knowledge of music perception and evoked responses to music. The study reveals in general that, for the most part, ‘successful' communication of emotion through dundun music occurred as the dùndún musician employs culture-specific as well as universal cues in arousing emotions. The listeners reacted accordingly, using the same cues as a result of the communication of shared cues in the Yorùbá sub-culture and the performer. Hence, communication of emotion in the world of dùndún consists of an interaction between the performer, the listener, the music and the culture, which also encompasses the context of performance. The findings of the study could be beneficial for further understanding of non-Western indigenous music from music cognitive perspectives

    Can a piece of music with a positive emotional elicitation improve dream content and the phenomenological experience?

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    Dreams can be defined as a series of thoughts, ideas and sensations that occur involuntarily within our minds during the stages of sleep. As there is a current lack of research connecting music and its effects on dreams, this thesis will investigate if music can have a positive effect on dreaming. Longer lasting effects if music can positively alter our dreams, is a reduction in nightmares and stressful dreaming. Many of us dream or experience dreaming on a nightly basis whether it be wild, vivid experiences or just the recall of a sensation. First, five pieces of music across five different genres were assessed (using the BRECVEMA model of music psychology), and then presented to a group of participants to see how emotions were perceived across the five selected genres/pieces (scores attained from the Emotion Worksheets). It was found that the ‘Musical Theatre’ piece of music had the highest level of positive emotional elicitation within participants.Then, various aspects of dreaming including dream contents and various experiences of dreaming (PANAS, vividness, coherence, recall and sensory information) were examined for two weeks, one week where the participants listened to the selected piece of music and one where participants listened to no music. Participants were given a dream journal to complete throughout the two weeks which included; pre-sleep questionnaire, a space to record dreams and a post-sleep questionnaire. It was found that when the participants were listening to music, they experienced significantly more positive contents of their dreams, whereas dreaming experiences were not altered in accordance with the music. Although, further research within this field is needed to fully assess whether all music as a whole can alter our emotions strong enough to change our dream content and our phenomenological experience. Other pieces of music within other genres and the same genre could be deemed more powerful and have more of a lasting effect

    An Empirical Aesthetics of the Sublime and Beautiful

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    The sublime and the beautiful are two of the oldest, most discussed categories of aesthetic experience. In their most basic of descriptions, the sublime refers to an aesthetic experience of fear and delight, and the beautiful refers to an aesthetic experie nce of pure pleasure. explores them empirically, theoretically informed by Edmund Burke’s This thesis A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1) What are the physical characteri of 1759. Three questions are asked: stics of objects considered sublime, particularly size, height, colour, brightness, and contrast in photographs, and modality, style, and tempo in piano music? (2) What are the emotional characteristics of sublime experiences, especially in relation to fea r? 1 5 and (3) What is the relationship between judgements of the sublime and beautiful in various contexts? In separate studies involving 76 8 participants, sublimity and beauty are related but separate experiences with distinct visual and auditory mechani sms. For images, although subjective sublimity and beauty ratings of images often show moderate correlations, sublimity is more influenced by presentation size than is beauty, while beauty is relatively more sensitive towards the presence of colour, and su blimity and beauty are both increased by higher presentation of images. Although subjective sublimity often correlates with subjective fear finding replicated in various studies and tasks correlates of fear meathere is no evidence that physiological sured by skin conductance responses (SCR) and faciala electromyography (fEMG) are activated at the same time as subjective sublimity. Together , these findings show that the associations of sublimity with size, height, and fear which are found in various cultures and languages, and especially in Burke’s text, of large number of stimuli and partici are realistic. Methodologically , pants makes the findings generali s the studies’ s use able, which is often not always the case in the literature of empirical aesthetics. In conclusion, sublimity is an important and separate component of aesthetic experience, beyond the mere study of beauty alone, which meri ts further study in aesthetic science
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