The processing of emotional body expressions within architectural experience: electroencephalography and eye-tracking studies in virtual reality

What the study found

Architectural experience modulated neural and visual processing of emotional body expressions in social scenarios.

Limitations

Thesis findings require appraisal of individual studies; VR social stimuli are simplified.

Neurodesign interpretation

A room may alter social cognition by changing how bodies, distance and emotional cues are processed. This is a richer Neurodesign question than liking a room.

Possible design implications

Study how space changes perception of other people, not only how space is rated in isolation.

Why it stays in the corpus

Retain for the underexplored link between architecture and social perception.

Study design

Doctoral thesis; EEG and eye tracking

Population

Adult participants

Setting

VR architectural and social scenarios

Field

Social neuroscience, neuroarchitecture

Mechanism

Architecture-social perception interaction

Spatial variable

Architectural context, social-body cues

Keywords

social cognition, architecture, EEG, eye tracking, VR