Fangfang Liu

According to data published by the World Health Organization, 2.2 billion individuals have visual impairment, which significantly influences their cognitive perception of their surroundings.1 In re...

Background: Doctors often face heavy workloads and high-stress levels. Optimizing their workspaces can enhance emotional well-being, increase satisfaction, and improve healthcare outcomes. Currently, no theoretical framework exists for such spatial optimization, necessitating the exploration of key elements and interactions within the typical workspaces for doctors. Objectives: In this study, we focused on typical workplaces for doctors to identify the factors within these spaces that influence emotional regulation, assess their effectiveness, and establish an evaluation framework. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 medical experts, followed by qualitative thematic analysis to construct a clustering model. Subsequently, we identified the key categories to construct the Analytic Hierarchy Process model. We invited 10 medical experts and 10 architectural design experts to evaluate the importance of these factors using a judgment matrix approach. Results: The clustering model for emotional regulation included six dimensions: individual characteristics, spatial dimensions, physical aspects, decorative elements, atmosphere, and emotional expressions. The model identified four primary categories (spatial dimensions, physical aspects, decorative elements, and atmosphere) and assessed their relative weights. Conclusions: In this study, we identified key factors influencing doctors’ emotional regulation and established a clustering model. The evaluation model and importance weights of different factors provide effective recommendations for optimizing doctors’ workspaces and enhancing their work environments theoretically and practically.

Anxiety significantly impacts the well-being of university students. This study employs the pandemic-induced lockdown as a quasi-experimental situation to examine university students’ perceptions of the acoustic environment and anxiety levels, further investigating the potential correlation between these two variables. An online questionnaire survey was conducted with 250 respondents from seven cities, across nine universities in China, encompassing both high- and low-risk areas concerning the pandemic. In addition, acoustic assessments at three selected sites on the campus were conducted. The results indicate that respondents reported an increase in the perception of indoor noise, particularly voices and instrumental sounds. Concurrently, the sound pressure levels during lockdown were generally lower, resulting in a quieter outdoor acoustic environment. A total of 54% of the respondents reported experiencing anxiety symptoms during this period, and those perceiving changes in the acoustic environment exhibiting higher levels of anxiety. A significant correlation was observed between the acoustic perception and anxiety levels. Overall acoustic satisfaction was negatively correlated with anxiety levels, with this correlation being more pronounced in groups prone to anxiety, such as women. Furthermore, the loudness of the most prominently perceived sound was positively correlated with anxiety levels, with this correlation being stronger in groups less prone to anxiety, such as men. Respondents showed a high level of tolerance for social/communal sounds, voices and instrumental sounds. Conversely, natural and electromechanical sounds were correlated with higher anxiety levels. These findings provide valuable insights for mitigating anxiety through the manipulation of the acoustic environment.

Editorial: Soundscape, well-being and mental health during/after the COVID-19 pandemic

Although physiological measurements, subjective evaluation and other methods have been applied to visual attention research, architects still lack a systematic quantitative classification method when assessing the visual attention to built colonial heritage. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between people’s visual behaviour and subjective evaluation when observing built colonial heritage and to construct a prediction model based on eye-movement metrics and subjective evaluation indicators to distinguish the visual attention to built colonial heritage. This study recorded data from 54 participants while observing five scenes of built colonial heritage, and the results showed that participants had different visual behaviours and subjective evaluations when viewing built colonial heritage in different scenes. And visual attention to built colonial heritage was negatively correlated with the average saccades peak velocity and average saccades amplitude and positively correlated with the average pupil diameter; visual attention was correlated with 12 subjective evaluation indicators. The eye-movement metrics and subjective evaluation indicators with correlation to visual attention were used as input variables to construct a prediction model of visual attention to built colonial heritage based on the BP neural network. Different built colonial heritage’s low, middle and high visual attention were identified with high accuracy (74.46%). This quantitative method can help architects to measure the visual attention to built colonial heritage to develop conservation and renewal strategies.