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A diurnal (circadian) rhythm in body temperature is a widespread, and possibly universal, feature of endotherms. Some mammals and birds down-regulate their metabolic rate significantly by night, allowing their body temperature to drop sufficiently that they become inactive and enter torpor. Both the minimum temperature achieved and the duration of torpor are highly variable. Daily torpor is principally a response to reduced energy intake, and a drop in ambient temperature. Hibernation is essentially an extreme form of torpor. Small mammals hibernating at high latitudes have regular arousals during which they urinate and may feed. Bears hibernate with relatively high body temperature, and do not undergo arousal. Only one bird, the poorwill, is known to hibernate. Rewarming during arousal may be fuelled exclusively by metabolism (for example in small mammals in the Arctic) or with significant energy input from basking (for example in subtropical arid areas). The capacity for torpor appears to be an ancestral character in both mammals and birds, possibly related to the origin of endothermy in small species subject to marked diurnal and/or seasonal variation in body temperature. Both deep hibernation and strict endothermy are probably derived characteristics.

Environmental assessment is closely related to the impact environments make on people. Places that induce anxiety and stress in childhood may be regarded with dismay later in life. The relationship between people and their environments may be conceived in physiological, psychological, or ethnological terms, or, which is often the case, by concepts borrowed from these three fields simultaneously. The description of the relationship can be kept either at a molecular or a molar level. The former may be exemplified by the effect of noise on blood pressure, while the latter may be the home's impact on the developing child. The present chapter constitutes an attempt to formulate a model at the molar level of human-environment interaction, largely based on knowledge from the neuropsychological discipline. For the sake of clarity I will first discuss some of the basic concepts employed in contemporary model building in neuropsychology. I will then suggest that these concepts may be brought together into what I have called the basic emotional process. I will support this construct by results from previous research on emotion, and also demonstrate the remarkable congruence between the physiological and semantic branches of this research. Using the emotional process as a focus, a model of human-environment interaction will be proposed, which describes how the person may feel and act under the influence of the physical and social environment, mediated by his or her individual reaction tendencies. The presentation will be illustrated by reference to field studies and experiments carried out by our group since the mid-1960s. Ample use will also be made of studies carried out elsewhere. However, the chapter does not, in the conventional sense, constitute a review of the existing literature on environmental assessment. Instead, it presents one view on assessment, which naturally leads to a specific organization of the existing evidence. One advantage of the proposed model is that it has the capacity to incorporate recent findings of the neurosciences in a detailed and precise way. The model may also be developed and tested further in this direction. Another advantage is that the model has proven to be a useful tool in the environmental design process.

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).

Before trying to analyze environmental assessment throughout the life span, let us briefly consider what environmental assessment means. Craik (1971), for instance, distinguishes five kinds of place assessment: physical and spatial properties of places, number and variety of artifacts in a place, traits of places, behaviors typically occurring in a place, and institutional attributes or social climate of places. In general, models of environmental assessment can be considered place centered, while environmental appraisal relates more to observer-centered variables. Gifford (1987) stresses how environmental appraisal refers to different personal impressions, such as descriptions, evaluations, emotional reactions, meanings, and attitudes of concern. In his recent review of environmental psychology, Holahan (1986) includes under assessment studies relating to the affective appraisal of the environment (Russell & Lanius, 1984), place evaluation envisioned in terms of the degree to which a place is seen as helping to achieve goals (Canter, 1983), the cognitive components in environmental assessment and the “supporting environment”—that is, an environment in which the information necessary for making decisions is readily available and interpretable (Kaplan, 1982), preferences for places and their attractiveness (Nasar, 1983; Zube & Pitt, 1981), residential satisfaction and neighborhood attachment (Fried, 1982; Galster & Hesser, 1981), and identification of standards of quality for various settings (Craik, 1981). Thus environmental assessment includes a variety of factors and/or of processes, ranging from the mere perception of a place to affective/emotional evaluations of it. Even if all of the components of assessment are relevant, not all of them will be considered here. We will focus mainly on cognitive aspects of environmental assessment. This means perception, cognitive evaluation, affective/emotional evaluation, and preference for places. These aspects are all interrelated to the concept of “place schema” (we will use “schema” when referring to one single schema, and “schemata” when referring to the plural). A place schema is abstract and hierarchically organized knowledge about places. Perception of a place can be viewed as the mere fact of coming into contact with a setting through the senses. Perception may also include the categorization and/or the conceptualization of a place, and it can also mean to form or use place schemata.