Life-Span Developmental Issues in Environmental Assessment, Cognition, and Action: Applications to Environmental Policy, Planning, and Design

This chapter addresses the question of how research on environmental assessment, cognition, and action can be utilized in the professional arenas of public policy, urban planning, and architectural design. Initially a discussion on three papers (Chapters 12, 13, and 14), the chapter attempts to extrapolate policy and design implications for the built environment from current knowledge on life-span developmental issues as represented by these three chapters. Suggestions of other research questions, issues, and strategies that might better inform policy and design are then discussed. In conclusion, the chapter briefly explores six general issues about the interaction of environmental cognition and research utilization. The contributions to this volume by Giovanna Axia, Erminielda Mainardi Peron, and Maria Rosa Baroni, by Lynn Liben, and by Roger Hart and Michael Conn have dealt heavily with child development and very little with aging or life-span development. Little evidence is presented from the gerontological and geriatric literatures, and less from the life-span literature. Liben presents a clear conceptualization of lifespan developmental approaches to environmental cognition, but to date there have been few studies and thus no data specifically on life-span developmental changes in environmental cognition. My chapter, therefore, will be weighted most heavily on the earlier phases of human development though, where feasible, it will comment on implications for the environment of elderly adults and on the environmental context of life-span developmental changes. Despite their titles and intentions, the three chapters focus most heavily on environmental cognition and much less on assessment and action. For example, after discussing the wide variety of possible definitions of assessment, including appraisal, evaluation, preferences, and attachment. Axia et al. focus most heavily on the cognitive aspects of schemata, representation, and organization of knowledge. Similarly, Hart and Conn valiantly take on the challenge of reporting on children's decision making and environmental behavior, but their empirical examples are also limited to cognitive and metacognitive issues. My chapter will thus also focus on environmental knowing. There are many interesting points of a theoretical and conceptual nature to raise about environmental assessment, cognition, and action from these three chapters, but this task is left to the other commentary chapter by Christopher Spencer.

Developmental Perspectives on Decision Making and Action in Environments

The task we have been set is to review developmental theory concerning how individuals act in real-world environments. To simplify this difficult task we have emphasized the developmental span of childhood, the area of our professional expertise. Before proceeding with the review, a few comments regarding the framework of this book and, within it, the definition of our task will enable us to illuminate some of the assumptions inherent in the structure of this volume and to explain how this has affected our conceptualization of the problem. The stated goal of this book is to look at the separate areas of human relatedness to the environment that are recognized by “most research in environmental psychology”: environmental cognition, environmental appraisal and decision making, and action in environments (see Table 1.1 in Chapter 1 of this volume). We agree that although such a separation of cognition and evaluation from action is a reflection of the dominant tendency of research, it is true of only some theories. To accept this division and to discuss primarily action would prevent us from emphasizing those theorists who have argued that human relatedness to the environment must be thought of holistically and dynamically. Consequently, although we have tried to emphasize action, this chapter actually deals simultaneously with cognition and appraisal. The question of why more integrative and holistic theories have been largely ignored is itself important. We argue that the answer lies in a fear by psychologists of such research because it cannot easily meet the traditional tenets of what constitutes good theory—building through experimental research design. A second problem in the task definition is the use of the word “space.” We should not simply be addressing “spatial decisions and actions” but environmental decisions and actions. In the field of environmental psychology the terms “space” and “environment” are commonly used synonymously. We think of space as just one characteristic of objects in the environment. Unfortunately, space is the characteristic that most environmental cognition research has addressed. This is somewhat understandable, for environmental psychology finds its distinctiveness in the study of the large-scale environment in which space (spatial relatedness) is the most distinguishing variable.

Conceptualization and Application: Psychological Processes in Environmental Cognition and Assessment

Effective research application has always been an important but illusive goal in environment- behavior research. However, the fact that we have not been entirely successful in realizing this goal should not be a source of particular surprise or dismay. Problems of effective research utilization are not at all unique to environment-behavior studies; they are common across disciplines and professions that endeavor to link knowledge and action (Weisman, 1983). Such difficulties are a reflection of fundamentally different ideas of what constitutes effective research application. Assessment of the applicability of the models of psychological processes presented by Böök, Küller, and S. Kaplan (this volume), therefore, is not a simple or entirely straightforward task. It is necessary to first consider the quite different yet useful ways in which application has been defined. After this discussion of application, each of the models in this section will be briefly reviewed, and some conclusions drawn regarding their applicability to environmental planning and design. Throughout this chapter, particular emphasis is placed on the need to confront the physical environment in theoretically meaningful terms and the ways in which this can advance our ability to link environmental knowledge and action. Application may be viewed in many different ways. For some practitioners, research utilization is defined in terms of “instrumental application” (Weiss, 1980). This straightforward view focuses on “the direct application of a research finding in a project, program, policy or administrative decision” (Seidel, 1985, p. 50). Such instrumental application, however, is not the only nor necessarily the most significant avenue for research application. Almost 30 years ago, in a particularly thoughtful article, policy analyst Max Millikan explored the relationship of knowledge and action. Decision makers, Millikan suggested, “commit their elementary error in an inductive fallacy—the assumption that the solution of any problem will be advanced by the simple collection of fact.” “This is easiest to observe,” Millikan noted, “in government circles, where research is considered as identical with ‘intelligence’” (1959, p. 163).

Environmental Assessment, Cognition, and Action: Research Applications

Environmental assessment has been defined as “a general conceptual and methodological framework for describing and predicting how attributes of places relate to a wide range of cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses” (Craik & Feimer, 1987). A primary purpose for assessing environments is to provide valid and reliable information that has utility in environmental planning, design, and management decision making. Implicit in the assessment activity is the assumption of identifiable relationships of physical environmental factors with descriptive and evaluative assessments, and with predictions of responses to places conceptualized in plans and designs, but not yet built. This chapter addresses the utility of research findings. Three primary questions are posed. Why are some environmental assessment and cognition research findings used successfully in decision making while others are not? What factors contribute to these outcomes? And how important are physical environmental factors in planning, design, and management decision making? The preceding chapters by Rachel Kaplan, Reginald Golledge, and Harry Timmermans provide the background for the following discussion. The first section of this chapter presents a brief review of similarities and differences among the three preceding chapters, with specific attention directed to interpretations or definitions of the concepts of assessment and preference, the use of physical environmental variables in the assessment process, and the roles of laypersons and experts in assessment. Potential uses for and applications of environmental assessment research are described in the second section. This is followed by a discussion of the differences between instrumental and conceptual applications and of factors that have been identified as influencing applications, factors such as communications between researchers and users, responsibilities for problem definition, and the context within which the research is conducted. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the opportunities for and probable limitations on applications of the preceding chapters by R. Kaplan, Golledge, and Timmermans. Four concepts and elements that are addressed in the three chapters have been selected for purposes of structuring a comparison among them. These concepts and elements—assessment, preference, roles of laypersons and experts, and physical environmental factors—are particularly salient to the issue of research applications.

From Environmental to Ecological Cognition

In this book we have discussed how two subfields of environmental psychology— environmental cognition and assessment—are linked to each other as well as to research in related fields on decision making and action in real-world environments. We hope this discussion will stimulate integration of these heretofore unrelated fields of research. By integration we mean the establishment of a framework that shows how research in the different subfields fits together into some overall view of environmental psychology. Initially a framework of this kind must be established through analyses of existing research. The chapters in this book include such analyses. However, an integrative framework should eventually develop into a theory subject to empirical tests. This final chapter analyzes what bearings the preceding chapters have on the possibility of integration across environmental cognition, assessment, and action. We will do this by discussing a number of obstacles to integration. In doing so, a tentative, integrative framework and an agenda for future research directions are proposed. The basic motivation behind this book is that integration should lead to future, more promising research directions than currently available for understanding human-environment relationships. However, there are other benefits of integration as well. One additional such benefit is its potential value for applications through policy formation, planning, and design. Because applications have been and continue to be important to environmental psychology, a final section of the present chapter comments on this issue. The preceding chapters have revealed a number of potentially significant obstacles to the integration of research on cognition, assessment, and action in real-world environments. The most critical ones are that different researchers prefer different theoretical perspectives, that they, partly as a consequence of that, emphasize different aspects of their respective problems, and that they often prefer research paradigms that may make integration more difficult. A serious obstacle to integration across the different subfields of environmental cognition, assessment, and action is created by the low level of integration even within the subfields. Particularly striking are differences in theoretical perspectives. Such differences have far-reaching consequences because they determine how problems are framed, how hypotheses are formulated, and what research methods are chosen (Gärling & Golledge, 1989; Moore, 1987; Saegert & Winkel, 1990).

Life-Span Changes in Activities, and Consequent Changes in the Cognition and Assessment of the Environment

In this chapter, I sketch an integrated account of environmental assessment, cognition, and action throughout the individual’s life span. Zimring and Gross (this volume) have already described how the schema is structured to include all three aspects; Canter (this volume) has extended this to stress the social context of meanings and actions in which these schema operate; and this chapter accepts and develops their positions. What further can a life-span approach add to the arguments advanced in these earlier integrative chapters? Liben (this volume) has already stated the case most powerfully with respect to her topic, environmental cognition; and it can as easily be applied to evaluation and action. A life-span approach enables development to be put in context: what earlier stages have so far equipped the individual to do, what the demands of the current situation are on the individual, and how variations at the present stage can affect later development. Taking this developmental perspective throws the emphasis on process and on the adaptive nature of the environmental schema for the particular life stage reached by the individual. As such, the perspective provides a test bed for examining the range of theoretical relationships between affect, cognition, and action in the environment advanced in earlier chapters. The life-span approach can also serve to reintroduce into the field a sense of the importance of individual differences, and continuities of individuality through life, which is conspicuously missing from many of the earlier chapters. The developmental tradition within psychology has not, as a whole, stressed individual differences as much as has done the life-span developmental. The life-span perspective has been much concerned with continuities and developments within the individual, as goals and tasks change over the life course. Much mainstream “developmental” research lacks this sense of continuity, being often presented as a series of snapshots of the typical child at different ages or stages. In contrast, the life-span approach, as Liben’s chapter reminds us, emphasizes the processes whereby developments occur, and conceptualizes this development as affected by biological changes, psychological development, changes in the individual’s social role and context, cultural forces, and historical changes during the individual’s life span.

Environmental Cognition through Direct and Representational Experiences: A Life-Span Perspective

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a review of past research and theory in environmental cognition from the perspective of life-span developmental psychology, to suggest future directions for work in this area, and to lay the groundwork for questions of application that are discussed elsewhere in this volume. Before it is possible to address these goals, however, it is essential to establish what is meant by “a life-span developmental approach to environmental cognition.” The first section of the chapter is thus devoted to a discussion of these definitional issues. The second section provides a selective review of past research. The research has been chosen to illustrate how changes in individual development in a variety of domains (e.g., development of logical classification skills in the cognitive domain, or development of interpersonal attachment in the socioemotional domain) may have consequences for environmental cognition. The review of past work leads to the observation that most research has focused on how environmental cognition is derived from direct experience in environments. It is argued that another extremely influential source of environmental cognition is through exposure to representations of environments. Thus, the final section of the chapter contains discussions of the roles of environmental representations for environmental cognition, and descriptions of some recent research in this area. In the original conceptualization of the conference on which this volume is based, Evans and Gärling (1987) defined environmental cognition as . . . the processes involved in the perception and cognition of spatial information in the real world. Most of this research has not examined preference or evaluation. Instead the focus has been primarily on understanding the cognitive processes themselves and how they are influenced by person variables (e.g. age, gender, familiarity) and by environmental variables such as landmarks, path structures, or overall organizational factors, (p. 2) . . . This definition works well for the purpose intended, that is, for distinguishing environmental cognition from environmental assessment, on the one hand, and from decision making and action, on the other. In part, these distinctions are congruent with a taxonomy developed earlier (Liben, 198la), which similarly placed environmental cognition in a broader context.

Searching for the Environment in Environmental Cognition Research

Research in environmental cognition has been fragmented into at least three related but separate areas that reflect different purposes, viewpoints, and disciplinary conventions (Evans and Gärling, this volume). One tradition has focused on predicting spatial choices such as choosing shops or modes of transportation (Timmermans, this volume). A second tradition, driven in part by the necessity to make value judgments about settings to be spared or modified in development, has focused on the assessment of environments, and particularly on the visual quality of natural settings (R. Kaplan, this volume). Finally, a third tradition, coming principally from psychology and geography, has focused on exploring the content and structure of mental representations of the environment (Golledge, this volume). In this chapter we discuss these three approaches to environmental cognition and examine how they can contribute to each other and to a more general view of action, evaluation, and cognition. We focus specifically on the linkages between the physical environment, cognitive mediators, and outcomes such as wayfinding, decision making, and other actions. We pay particular attention to how the environment and mediators are represented. This chapter is organized into several sections. After the introduction, we review the chapters in this volume by Timmermans, R. Kaplan, and Golledge. Unlike much previous work in evaluation and in spatial decision making, all three authors discuss the cognitive processes that mediate between environment and behavior. The following section considers alternative approaches to cognitive mediators such as mental models and schemas. Following this, we briefly examine how the physical setting has been represented in environmental cognition. We then turn to computational models that attempt to provide rigorous definitions of both environment and mediator. Next, we propose our own preliminary schema-based model of wayfinding. Finally, we suggest some questions for further research. In artificial intelligence research a distinction is made between two alternative approaches to theory: “scruffy” and “neat” (Luger & Stubblefield, 1989). Whereas researchers following both traditions are interested in simulating human cognitive behavior, the scruffies primarily focus on producing a computational system where the outcomes mimic human behavior.

Beyond Rationality: Clarity-Based Decision Making

The study of how people make decisions has long been dominated by the economic man or rationality model. In recent years researchers have extended the study of decision making into the spatial context. Given the pervasive role of the rationality model it was not surprising to see reliance on it in this new domain as well (Golledge & Timmermans, 1987; Timmermans, this volume). There are, however, at least two reasons why one might have hoped for a broader perspective. First, given its obvious kinship to the area of environmental cognition, research on spatial decision making could have reflected the concern for cognitive structure central to the wayfinding literature. Second, the rationality model has increasingly been the subject of searching questions and criticism. Cracks have been appearing in the once near-monolithic support for this model. A number of psychologists have been quite articulate about what they see as serious deficiencies in this approach (Einhorn & Hogarth, 1985; Herrnstein & Mazur, 1987; Kruglanski & Ajzen, 1983; Simon, 1957; Wallach & Wallach, 1983). Even economists have expressed serious reservations (Bell & Kristol, 1981; Earl, 1983a; Eichner, 1983; Kuttner, 1985; Lutz, 1987). Decision theorists have not been insensitive to these concerns; many modifications have been proposed (see Jungermann, 1983, for an extensive review). If there is a consensus among them, it is far from obvious. In the absence of such a consensus, many stalwart investigators (including economists and planners) continue within the comfortable and familiar confines of the classical framework. In the discussion that follows, the term “rationality” will be used to refer to the classical rationality position that still endures in many quarters, and that still serves as a center of gravity for the multitude of dissatisfied revisionists. In its simplest form, the position can be summarized as stating that people have perfect knowledge and that they strive to maximize their gains. A most interesting analysis of the increasingly obvious inadequacy of the rationality model and of how planners are coping with this state of affairs is provided by E.R. Alexander (1984). The picture he paints is essentially one of a paradigm decline, with heroic efforts on the part of practitioners to carry on nonetheless.

Spatial Cognition as Events

This chapter deals with the question of how adults process information about large-scale physical features and their spatial relations during navigation between places. The presentation is based on the presumption that single acts of cognition are comparatively unimportant in real-life travel. Accordingly, sequential relations between acts are emphasized, which is the reason for the term event in the title. In general, ways of seeing how spatial cognition is organized in time and space should further the search for connections between the fields of spatial cognition, environmental assessment and action. However, the latter prospect is beyond the scope of this chapter. The aim—to make explicit the sequence aspect of cognitive acts in several problem areas of spatial cognition—is pursued in a spirit of inductive analysis in that a number of act sequences are discussed as examples of important spatial cognition events. The approach is first described in broad outline. Processing of large-scale spatial information may entail different theoretical perspectives on levels of mental functioning. Basic mechanisms and operations that underlie the occurrence of cognitive acts represent one level, being the main focus of contemporary theory construction and model building. Further, cognitive acts are reflected in conscious activity and self-consciousness, which represent a second level. Finally, a third level emerges to the extent that cognitive acts are reliably ordered continuously in time and space. Common categories of acts in large-scale spatial cognition are perceptual identification, encoding, recognition, and recall of environmental information, judgments of topological, projective, and metric spatial relations, spatial inference, visual-spatial imagery, and spatial choice. Detailed processing underlying these cognitive acts is progressively unraveled by means of refined task paradigms, deductive reasoning, mathematics, and procedures for controlling subjects’ behavioral and mental activities. This kind of knowledge is sparse in the field of large-scale spatial cognition (Pick, 1985). Independent variables in experiments have been related as often to issues of development, the structure of location information in cognitive maps, methodology, or application as to the nature of processing per se (cf. Evans, 1980). In the long run, theory about underlying processing is indispensible for any of these concerns, including the event approach to be presented here.