Asano and colleagues learned that walking in hot outdoor environments can harm subsequent cognitive performance indoors; this finding supports creating more temperature controlled indoor walking areas in office complexes and similar locations. The research team reports that “In the experiments [conducted], a total of 96 participants took a mathematical addition test in an air-conditioned room before and after walking in an actual outdoor environment. Results of the experiments showed that walking outdoors under heat-stressful conditions (UTCI ≧ 44 °C) for 15 min decreased the cognitive performance (percentage of correct answers to numbers of problems solved) by 3.6% compared with that before walking. An analysis focusing on the sleep duration showed a negative relationship between sleep duration and the decrease in cognitive performance. This tendency became particularly clear among the participants whose sleep duration was less than 5 h. The reduction of cognitive performance was more pronounced in male participants than in female participants. Sleep-deprived men who walk in a heat-stressful outdoor environment are more likely to exhibit poor cognitive performance when they return to an air-conditioned room.”
Yuki Asano, Yusuke Nakamura, Asuka Suzuki-Parker, Shohei Aiba, and Hiroyuki Kusaka. 2022. “Effect of Walking in Heat-Stressful Outdoor Environments In an Urban Setting on Cognitive Performance Indoors.” Building and Environment, vol. 213, 108893, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.108893
Sally Augustin, PhD, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com). Research Design Connections reports on research conducted by social and physical scientists that designers can apply in practice. Insights derived from recent studies are integrated with classic, still relevant findings in concise, powerful articles. Topics covered range from the cognitive, emotional, and physiological implications of sensory and other physical experiences to the alignment of culture, personality, and design, among others. Information, in everyday language, is shared in a monthly subscription newsletter, an archive of thousands of published articles, and a free daily blog. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.