The New York State Lighting Efficiency Standards for existing public buildings were developed so that nontechnical persons can calculate present power used for lighting in various spaces of their buildings and then determine the recommended allowable power budget for lighting each space. (Author)

Modern principles of color applied to schools will greatly improve the scholastic performance of students. (Author/MLF)

This study unites investigations into the linguistic relativity of color categories with research on children's category acquisition. Naming, comprehension, and memory for colors were tracked in 2 populations over a 3-year period. Children from a seminomadic equatorial African culture, whose language contains 5 color terms, were compared with a…

Infants aged 4 and 6 months were presented with events in which a person acted so as to set another person, or an inanimate object, in motion. In one condition, the actor spoke to the person (natural) or inanimate object (unnatural); in the other condition, the actor grasped and manipulated the person (unnatural) or object (natural). Six-month-old…

The problem of disorientation in a moving optical environment was examined. A pilot can experience egocentric disorientation if the entire visual environment moves relative to his body without a clue as to the objectives position of the airplane in respect to the ground. A simple method of measuring disorientation was devised. In this method…

The results of all basic measurements and calculations of reflected glare for different lighting materials and conditions are presented in a series of tables and charts. All basic concepts of a quantitative method for evaluating the visual significance of reflected glare are identified in relationship to different types of visual performance. The…

A historical perspective of the use of color on both the interior and exterior of buildings. (Author/MLF)

Sex specific biases in visual images was explored. When photographs of male and female faces were presented in a deliberately ambiguous manner, university students overreported the number of male faces and underreported female faces. The results are predictable with the variation of generic sentences shown with the photographs. (VM)

Using Keene "Director" fixtures, a Rotterdam, New York, school will save over $16,000 annually and have improved classroom light. These fixtures will pay for themselves in 3-4 years, halving the wattage used per square foot; they direct 40 percent of their light upward to provide uniform, glare-free lighting. (MCG)

The author briefly reports some significant findings concerning the impact of the environment on human perception, behavior, and performance, touching particularly on color, seating arrangement and crowding, and music and noise. Implications for schools are discussed. (PGD)

In addition to their restricted peripheral fields, persons with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) report significant problems seeing in low levels of illumination, which causes difficulty with night travel. Several devices have been developed to support the visual needs of persons who have night blindness. These devices include wide-angle flashlights,…

A brief target that is visible when displayed alone can be rendered invisible by a trailing stimulus (metacontrast masking). It has been difficult to determine the temporal dynamics of masking to date because increments in stimulus duration have been invariably confounded with apparent brightness (Bloch's law). In the research reported here,…

In communication courses, the focus has traditionally been on text: how to craft good news or bad news messages, proposals, reports, and so on. However, rapid developments in printing and computer technology have meant that communication has become more visual than ever before. Words alone are not enough; students need to be able to communicate…

Michel Foucault's critical studies concerning regimes of power are of special interest when applied to architecture. In particular, he warned of the hazards of building surveillance into architectural structures for the purpose of monitoring people and took as his historical exemplar English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon," a structure…