Environmental Perception Visual

Phenomenal Awareness of the Surrounding Space: An Ecological Perspective
＜Cognitive Studies: Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, Vol. 15, No. 1, March, 2008 ＞
Makoto Inagami, Ryuzo Ohno and Reiko Tsujiuchi
	This study investigates the extent to which humans are aware of the space surrounding their bodies during daily locomotion. To capture this awareness in its natural state, our experiment adopted an indirect method that uses feelings of oppression and release caused by the surrounding environment. Participants continuously rated their feelings by turning a dial while walking along an outdoor route. The physical environment along this route was described in terms of the visible areas of buildings, trees, ground, and sky. Each area was measured from four different widths of view angles ranging from a limited view in front to a full 360° view. Analysis of the relationship between the ratings and measurements reveals that the feelings have the highest correlation with the 360° measurements. This result supports our hypothesis that humans are aware not only of the limited visual field but also of the entire surrounding space, including the space behind their bodies. Based on this finding, we discuss the traditional concept of spatial perception from an ecological perspective. Paper　→　PDF file


Effects of emerging scenes from the occluding edges on visual attention and evaluation of the landscape
＜J. Architect. Plann. Environ. Eng. Architectural Institute of Japan, (556), June 2002 pp.197-203＞ Ryuzo Ohno, Azusa Udagawa, Masashi Soeda ＜Presented at EDRA conference in Vancouver, May 2005＞
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		The present study examines the influence of the design of exit space on visual attention of a person who is leaving a building and on his/her impression of the outside scene. An experiment using visual simulation was conducted to test the assumption that the visitor's impression of an unfamiliar scene is affected by spatial layout of the exit space of a building. Twelve movies, four kinds of CG animations of opening overlaid on three photographs of different outdoor scenes, were projected on orthographic projection screen, which enabled a subject to observe a wide angle image. After viewing each movie lasting 12 seconds, each of thirty-six subjects, who wore an eye-mark recorder, was asked to rate the overall impression of the scene using seven bipolar adjective pairs. As a result, some aspects of the subject's impressions were found to vary according to the way the scene opened up as one moved through the space. The analysis of the subjects' eye movement revealed that subjects tended to attend the area in the scene coming into sight from the occluding edges, where subjects could find more information than other areas. Combination of these results suggests that subjects' overall impression is affected by the order of appearance of partial scenes (components) in the sight, and the eye movements, which tend to follow the occluding edges that move rapidly toward the periphery.

Perception of the Sense of Enclosure in Interior Spaces with Variations in Transparent and Opaque Surfaces

　　<Environment-Behavior Research on the Pacific Rim: Proceedings of PaPER 98, in printing, the 11th International Conference on People and Physical Environment Research, pp. 35-42, 2001＞

　 Ryuzo Ohno, Keiichiro Hara

　Contemporary buildings often feature enclosed spaces with large areas of window glazing. This study was made to assess the effect on the occupants "sense of enclosure" of different positions and amounts of transparent and opaque surfaces for both daytime and nighttime conditions. Subjects wearing a head-mounted display device permitting a high degree of head movement virtually "visited" a scale model space, under day and night conditions, whose enclosing surfaces were systematically varied with either transparent or opaque surfaces.
Analyses of the results indicated that :
1) Judgments of "degree of enclosure" clearly differentiated between spaces with transparent ceiling and those with an opaque ceiling.
2) Subjects feel less enclosed in a space with two adjacent transparent walls than with other arrangements of the same transparent and opaque walls.
3) Larger variation of "degree of enclosure" was noted in case that a transparent ceiling turns to an opaque ceiling than a transparent wall turns to an opaque wall in the daytime, but the opposite was true in the nighttime.
4) The variance of "degree of enclosure" between transparent and opaque surfaces was larger in the daytime than in the nighttime.

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Hypothetical Model of Environmental Perception: Ambient vision and layout of surfaces in the environment
<Book Chapter: in Wapner et al eds., Theoretical Perspectives in Environment-Behavior Research, Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers, pp.149-156, 2000＞ Ryuzo Ohno

The nature and role of ambient vision in environmental perception, as opposed to focal vision, is discussed based on recent findings in physiology and psychology, and a method which describes ambient visual information is proposed and tested by applying it to assess outdoor spaces of housing neighborhoods. The information obtained by ambient vision is hypothetically defined as a statistical measure of an array of visual surfaces which surround an observer. The visual surfaces in the environment were divided into basic units (components) on the basis of their ゛affordance", such as surfaces of pavement, earth, grass, trees, building and sky. A personal computer program was developed to measure the solid angles of visible area of the components and the volume of visible space around a given point in a proposed environment. Empirical studies, in which subjects rated sequential landscapes of different housing neighborhoods, revealed that the global impression, or feelings of a place can be well explained by some of the measures obtained by the program.

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Ambient Vision of the Environmental Perception: Describing Ambient Visual Information

<Proceedings of 22nd EDRA Conference, Environmental Design Research association, pp. 237-245, Mar. 1991＞

Ryuzo Ohno

The nature and role of ambient vision in environmental perception, as opposed to focal vision, is discussed based on recent findings in physiology and psychology, and a method which describes ambient visual information is proposed and tested by applying it to assess outdoor spaces of housing neighborhoods. The information obtained by ambient vision is hypothetically defined as a statistical measure of an array of visual surfaces which surround an observer. The visual surfaces in the environment were divided into basic units (components) on the basis of their ゛affordance", such as surfaces of pavement, earth, grass, trees, building and sky.
A personal computer program was developed to measure the solid angles of visible area of the components and the volume of visible space around a given point in a proposed environment. Empirical studies, in which subjects rated sequential landscapes of different housing neighborhoods, revealed that the global impression, or feelings of a place can be well explained by some of the measures obtained by the program.

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Notion of Duality in the Visual System and its Implication for Environmental Design

Ryuzo Ohno

Judging from the growing number of papers presented at the annual　conference of the Architectural Institute of Japan, architects and architectural researchers’ interest in environmental psychology is steadily increasing. However, many of these papers, particularly dealing with environmental perception, lack solid theoretical background. It may be partly because researchers can utilize an available "package" of existing psychological research tools with computer programs for analyses. For instance, multidimensional, or multifunctional analysis, which is now a very popular technique, is applied to "digest" numerous characteristics of an physical environment in order to explain human responses to it. In doing this, a number of elements in the environment are often arbitrarily chosen without a good theoretical framework. Thus, no clear conclusions can be obtained.
It may be useful to propose a model of environmental perception which can suggest what aspect of the environment is relevant to a certain kind of behavior. In other words, if we know what kinds of stimulus information in the environment are processed and utilized by human observer in a certain situation and in a certain behavior, then architects can design an environment quite effectively for a certain purpose. For instance, when considering the visibility and legibility of emergency exits in large underground shopping malls in the city center of Tokyo, research based on such a model may suggest how to locate signs and design other surrounding features.
This paper, reviews recent findings in physiology and psychology which suggest there are two different mechanisms in processing visual information, namely focal vision and ambient vision, and discusses the implication of this notion for environmental design and research.

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