Environmental noise is differently associated with negative and positive urban experience: an exploratory first-person pedestrian mobile study in Santiago de Chile (El ruido medioambiental se asocia de una manera diferente a la experiencia urbana negativa y positiva: un estudio exploratorio en movimiento de peatones en primera persona realizado en Santiago de Chile)

Abstract

Specific city features such as environmental noise have been related to psychological distress. The effects of noise — as a health risk variable — might depend on socioeconomic and demographic factors. However, this has not been fully tested yet. The present work explored the relationship between pedestrians’ first-person experience in the presence of natural urban environmental noise while walking through neighbourhoods in Santiago, Chile. Participants completed a predetermined guided walk. Geo-referenced mobile eye-tracking measured first-person audio-visual perceptual experience while being interviewed in situ. Results show the likelihood of reporting negative experiences is higher when environmental noise increases, while the likelihood of reporting positive experiences is reduced when environmental noise decreases. However, when socioeconomic status is considered as regressor, lower-income neighbourhoods report the inverse effect. We interpret these findings taking into account accessibility to green areas, public safety and access to public facilities that noisy environments afford. We hypothesize that the augmentation of environmental noise in lower-income neighbourhoods is associated with urbanicity benefits. Our results document the phenomenological impact of inequality in urban planning and development.

Mobile Brain/Body Imaging: Challenges and opportunities for the implementation of research programs based on the 4E perspective to cognition

“…Moreover, the development of new electrode technologies will enable EEG data to be collected from portable, comfortable-to-wear (Mathewson et al, 2017;Oliveira et al, 2016) and perhaps unobtrusive devices (Bleichner et al, 2016;Debener et al, 2015;Hölle et al, 2020;Mikkelsen et al, 2015;Mirkovic et al, 2016). These future developments will allow researchers to acquire neurophysiological signals during daily activities, such as exploring the built environment (Gramann et al, 2017;Palacios-Garcia et al, 2020;Parada, 2018;Wunderlich & Gramann, 2020) and/or during clinical encounters, such as psychotherapy (Lecchi et al, 2019;(Lecchi et al, 2019;Parada, Martín, et al, 2018;Rodríguez, Martínez, Díaz, Flores, Alvarez-Ruf, Crempien, Valdés, Campos, Artigas, Armijo, Krause, et al, 2018;Ryu et al, 2020).…”

“…Research using eye-tracking seeks to provide ecologically valid experimental designs (e.g., Aryadoust & Ang, 2019;John et al, 2018;Kredel et al, 2017) as well as high-precision measurements with good spatial and temporal sensitivity. The development of robust mobile technology, capable of capturing eye movements as participants actively interact in natural and virtual environments, has allowed researchers to address several questions pertinent to the 4E perspective (Dowiasch et al, 2015;2020;Fong et al, 2016;Macdonald & Tatler, 2018;Palacios-Garcia et al, 2020;Stuart et al, 2018;Wohltjen & Wheatley, 2021). Recently, Wohltjen & Wheatley (2021) explored hyperscanning eyetracker during naturalistic conversations, opening the door for social interaction and other meaningful 4E-based research paradigms.…”

“…However, in low-SNR/high-uncertainty situations, such as real-world conditions, many do not perform as well as expected. During 2018, our research group monitored eye movements (using Tobii Glasses 2 EyeTracker), EEG signals (using the EnoBio 8, Ruffini et al, 2007), spatial positioning (using global positioning system, GPS), and ambient noise while participants walked a predefined 600-m route in different neighborhoods of Santiago de Chile (Palacios-Garcia et al, 2020; Parada et al, 2019). However, under these real-world low-SNR conditions, the captured EEG signals were not sufficient to answer our initial research questions 5 .…”

Imagenología Cerebro/Corporal Móvil (MoBI): Desafíos y oportunidades para la implementación de programas de investigación basados en la aproximación 4E de la cognición

“…Sin embargo, en situaciones de bajo SNR, muchos de estos sistemas no tienen el rendimiento esperado. Durante el año 2018 nuestro grupo de investigación adquirió movimientos oculares mediante EyeTracker y señales EEG mientras participantes realizaban una caminata de 600 metros en distintos barrios de Santiago, Chile (Palacios-Garcia et al, 2020;Parada et al, 2019). Utilizamos el sistema EnoBio con 8 sensores (Ruffini et al, 2007).…”

Do not burn these gentle bridges: An empirical framework based on the 4E perspective is necessary, pertinent, and timely

“…Our research center has been making efforts to implement some of the ideas emanating from the 4E perspective to actual neuroscience experiments. We have explored aspects of the built environment, lifestyles, and the brain-gut-microbiota axis in cognition and experience (e.g., Palacios-Garcı´a et al, 2020;Palacios-Garcı´a and Parada, 2019), suggested a heuristic for designing 4E-based experiments (Parada, 2018), investigated body-world couplings and affordances in the embedding environment (Rojas-Lı´bano et al, 2018;Rossi et al, 2014Rossi et al, , 2018, and explored social aspects of cognition (Salas et al, 2021), among others. Nevertheless, the efforts made by our and other research groups still fall short, because as far as we know, a truly coherent and integrated framework between the 4E perspective and empirical neuroscience does not truly exist (Hutto et al, 2014;Ramı´rez-Vizcaya and Froese, 2019;Shamay-Tsoory and Mendelsohn, 2019).…”