Search Results (219)

As mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, and depression become increasingly prevalent in urban populations, there is a critical need to embed restorative functions into the built environment. Urban parks, as integral components of ecological infrastructure, play a vital role in promoting psychological well-being. This study explores how diverse park environments facilitate mental health recovery through multi-sensory engagement, using integrated psychophysiological assessments in a wetland park in Zhengzhou, China. Electroencephalography (EEG) and perceived restoration scores were employed to evaluate recovery outcomes across four environmental types: waterfront, wetland, forest, and plaza. Key perceptual factors—including landscape design, spatial configuration, biodiversity, and facility quality—were validated and analyzed for their roles in shaping restorative experiences. Results reveal significant variation in recovery effectiveness across environments. Waterfront areas elicited the strongest physiological responses, while plazas demonstrated lower restorative benefits. Two recovery pathways were identified: a direct, sensory-driven process and a cognitively mediated route. Biodiversity promoted physiological restoration only when mediated by perceived restorative qualities, whereas landscape and spatial attributes produced more immediate effects. Facilities supported psychological recovery mainly through cognitive appraisal. The study proposes a smart park framework that incorporates environmental sensors, adaptive lighting, real-time biofeedback systems, and interactive interfaces to enhance user engagement and monitor well-being. These technologies enable urban parks to function as intelligent, health-supportive infrastructures within the broader built environment. The findings offer evidence-based guidance for designing responsive green spaces that contribute to mental resilience, aligning with the goals of smart city development and healthy life-building environments. Full article

This research examines the cognitive and psychological mechanisms underlying young adults’ reactions to ESG-labeled online advertisements, specifically resistance to persuasion and purchase intention. Based on dual-process theories of persuasion and digital literacy theory, we develop and test a structural equation model (SEM) of perceived greenwashing, online advertising literacy, source credibility, persuasion knowledge, and advertising skepticism as predictors of behavioral intention. Data were gathered from 690 Greek consumers between the ages of 18–35 years through an online survey. All the direct effects hypothesized were statistically significant, while advertising skepticism was the strongest direct predictor of purchase intention. Mediation tests indicated that persuasion knowledge and skepticism partially mediated perceptions of greenwashing, literacy, and credibility effects, in favor of a complementary dual-route process of ESG message evaluation. Multi-group comparisons revealed significant moderation effects across gender, age, education, ESG familiarity, influencer trust, and ad-avoidance behavior. Most strikingly, women evidenced stronger resistance effects via persuasion knowledge, whereas younger users and those with lower familiarity with ESG topics were more susceptible to skepticism and greenwashing. Education supported the processing of source credibility and digital literacy cues, underlining the contribution of informational capital to persuasion resilience. The results provide theoretical contributions to digital persuasion and resistance with practical implications for marketers, educators, and policymakers seeking to develop ethical ESG communication. Future research is invited to broaden cross-cultural understanding, investigate emotional mediators, and incorporate experimental approaches to foster consumer skepticism and trust knowledge in digital sustainability messages. Full article

Mind wandering (MW) is a significant safety risk in driving, yet research on its scope, underlying mechanisms, and mitigation strategies remains fragmented across disciplines. In this review guided by the PRISMA framework, we analyze findings from 64 empirical studies to address these factors. The presented study quantifies the prevalence of MW in naturalistic and simulated driving environments and shows its impact on driving behaviors. We document its negative effects on braking reaction times and lane-keeping consistency, and we assess recent advancements in objective detection methods, including EEG signatures, eye-tracking metrics, and physiological markers. We also identify key cognitive and contextual risk factors, including high perceived risk, route familiarity, and driver fatigue, which increase MW episodes. Also, we survey emergent countermeasures, such as haptic steering wheel alerts and adaptive cruise control perturbations, designed to sustain driver engagement. Despite these advancements, the MW research shows persistent challenges, including methodological heterogeneity that limits cross-study comparisons, a lack of real-world validation of detection algorithms, and a scarcity of long-term field trials of interventions. Our integrated synthesis, therefore, outlines a research agenda prioritizing harmonized measurement protocols, on-road algorithm deployment, and rigorous evaluation of countermeasures under naturalistic driving conditions. Full article

As augmented reality (AR) advertising becomes increasingly prevalent across digital platforms, understanding how its unique features influence consumer responses is critical for both theory and practice. Based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this study develops and validates a dual-dimension content–dual-route processing model to investigate how different features of AR advertising influence consumer engagement. Specifically, it examines how product-related attributes (attractiveness, informativeness) and technology-related attributes (interactivity, augmentation) shape attitudes toward the ad and purchase intentions through cognitive (information credibility) and affective (enjoyment) pathways. Using data from an online survey (N = 299), the study applies partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed model. The results show that informativeness and augmentation significantly enhance information credibility, while attractiveness primarily influences emotional responses. Interactivity and augmentation positively influence cognitive and affective responses. Mediation analysis confirms the simultaneous activation of central and peripheral processing routes, with flow experience emerging as a significant moderator in selected pathways. By introducing a structured framework for AR advertising content, this study extends the applicability of the ELM in immersive media contexts. It underscores the combined impact of rational evaluation and emotional engagement in shaping consumer behavior and offers practical insights for designing effective AR advertising strategies. Full article

With the increasing prevalence of autonomous vehicles (AVs), drivers’ spatial cognition and takeover performance have become critical to traffic safety. This study investigates the effects of landmark salience—specifically visual and structural salience—on drivers’ spatial cognition and takeover behavior in autonomous driving scenarios. Two simulator-based experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 examined the impact of landmark salience on spatial cognition tasks, including route re-cruise, scene recognition, and sequence recognition. Experiment 2 assessed the effects of landmark salience on takeover performance. Results indicated that salient landmarks generally enhance spatial cognition; the effects of visual and structural salience differ in scope and function in autonomous driving scenarios. Landmarks with high visual salience not only improved drivers’ accuracy in making intersection decisions but also significantly reduced the time it took to react to a takeover. In contrast, structurally salient landmarks had a more pronounced effect on memory-based tasks, such as scene recognition and sequence recognition, but showed a limited influence on dynamic decision-making tasks like takeover response. These findings underscore the differentiated roles of visual and structural landmark features, highlighting the critical importance of visually salient landmarks in supporting both navigation and timely takeover during autonomous driving. The results provide practical insights for urban road design, advocating for the strategic placement of visually prominent landmarks at key decision points. This approach has the potential to enhance both navigational efficiency and traffic safety. Full article

Spatial memory is a critical component of spatial cognition, particularly in unfamiliar environments. As navigation systems become integral to daily life, understanding how individuals with varying spatial abilities respond to different navigation modes is increasingly important. This study employed a virtual driving environment to examine how participants with varying spatial abilities (good or poor) performed under three navigation modes, namely visual, audio, and combined audio–visual navigation modes. A total of 78 participants were divided into two groups, good sense of direction (G-SOD) and poor sense of direction (P-SOD), according to their Santa Barbara Sense of Direction (SBSOD) scores. They were randomly assigned to one of the three navigation modes (visual, audio, audio–visual). Participants followed navigation cues and simulated driving behavior to the end point twice during the learning phase, then completed the route retracing task, recognizing scenes task and recognizing the order task. Significant main effects were found for both SOD group and navigation mode, with no interaction. G-SOD participants outperformed P-SOD participants in route retracing task. Audio navigation mode led to better performance in tasks involving complex spatial decisions, such as turn intersections and recognizing the order. The accuracy of recognizing scenes did not significantly differ across SOD groups or navigation modes. These findings suggest that audio navigation mode may reduce visual distraction and support more effective spatial encoding and that individual spatial abilities influence navigation performance independently of guidance type. These findings highlight the importance of aligning navigation modalities with users’ cognitive profiles and support the development of adaptive navigation systems that accommodate individual differences in spatial ability. Full article

Background/Objectives: Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are often incomplete, which can significantly impact the performance of downstream applications. Manual completion of KGs is time-consuming and costly, emphasizing the importance of developing automated methods for KGC. Link prediction serves as a fundamental task in this domain. The semantic correlation among entity features plays a crucial role in determining the effectiveness of link-prediction models. Notably, the human brain can often infer information using a limited set of salient features. Methods: Inspired by this cognitive principle, this paper proposes a lightweight Bi-level routing attention mechanism specifically designed for link-prediction tasks. This proposed module explores a theoretically grounded and lightweight structural design aimed at enhancing the semantic recognition capability of language models without altering their core parameters. The proposed module enhances the model’s ability to attend to feature regions with high semantic relevance. With only a marginal increase of approximately one million parameters, the mechanism effectively captures the most semantically informative features. Result: It replaces the original feature-extraction module within the KGML framework and is evaluated on the publicly available WN18RR and FB15K-237 dataset. Conclusions: Experimental results demonstrate consistent improvements in standard evaluation metrics, including Mean Rank (MR), Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR), and Hits@10, thereby confirming the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Full article

The market share of Last-Mile Delivery Robots (LMDRs) has grown rapidly over the past few years. These robots are mostly autonomous and supported remotely by human operators. As part of a broader shift toward sustainable urban logistics, LMDRs are seen as a promising low-emission alternative to conventional delivery vehicles. While there is a large body of literature about the technology, little is known about the real-world experiences of operating these robots. This study investigates the operational challenges faced by remote operators (ROs) of LMDRs, aiming to enhance their efficiency and safety. Through interviews with industry professionals, we explore the scenarios requiring human intervention, the strategies employed by ROs, and the unique challenges they encounter. Our findings not only identify key intervention scenarios but also provide a thorough examination of the teleoperation ecosystem, operational workflows, and how they affect the ways the ROs manage their interactions with robots. We found that ROs’ involvement varies from monitoring to active intervention to support the robots in completing their tasks when they face connectivity issues, blocked routes, and various other interruptions on their journeys. The findings highlight the importance of intuitive user interfaces (UIs) and decision-support systems to reduce cognitive load and improve situational awareness. This research contributes to the literature by offering a detailed examination of real-world teleoperation practices and focusing on the human factors influencing LMDR scalability, sustainability, and integration into future-ready logistics systems. Full article

The ability to navigate through both familiar and unfamiliar environments is of critical importance for foraging efficiency, safety, and energy budgeting in wild animals. For animals that remain in the same home range annually, such as grey-footed chacma baboons (Papio ursinus griseipes), movement efficiency is expected to reflect familiarity with the home range as well as the nature of the resources within it. For example, resources that are patchy, transient, or seasonal present a greater spatial cognitive challenge, and travel between them may be less efficient than for more widespread or permanent resources. Here, we analyse daily route efficiency in adult female grey-footed chacma baboons at Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. We use GPS data taken at 15 min intervals from collars deployed on two baboons in each of two study troops (four total) to identify areas of interest used during daily ranging periods (sleep site to sleep site). We then compare the length of the route taken between a given day’s patches to routes calculated by two alternate optimisation heuristics as follows: the nearest neighbour method, in which the subject repeatedly travels to the next most proximate patch and does not necessarily return to the same place, and the Concorde algorithm, which calculates the shortest possible route connecting the day’s patches. We show that baboons travel more efficient routes than those yielded by the nearest-neighbour heuristic but less efficient routes than the Concorde method, implying some degree of route planning. We discuss our novel method of area of interest identification using only remote GPS data, as well as the implications of our findings for primate movement and cognition. Full article

Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) is a highly potent toxic gas, and the brain is a primary target organ following acute intoxications. Accidents and misuse of this gas for nefarious purposes, i.e., bioterrorism, are causes for concern regarding acute poisoning. The immediate effects of acute H₂S poisoning are well known. Numerous publications have reported neurological sequelae, including insomnia, persistent headaches, ataxia, cognition deficits, hearing impairment, dysarthria, and neuropsychiatric behaviors, among survivors of acute H₂S poisoning. However, this subject remains controversial. The goal of this study was to review the literature on acute H₂S-poisoning-induced neurological sequelae and on animal models to determine prevalence and knowledge gaps. We also reviewed the literature on cyanide-induced neurological sequelae. The results of large population studies indicate that the majority of victims of acute H₂S poisoning survive. There is a lack of patient follow-up and standardized neuropsychological, neurological, and neuroimaging for accurate assessments. We observed flaws in animal models that failed to recapitulate the severe neurotoxicity induced via the inhalation route. We observed a paucity of literature on cyanide-induced neurological sequelae. In contrast to cyanide-induced sequelae, predominantly characterized by Parkinsonian-like motor behavioral deficits, H₂S patients exhibit mostly cognition deficits, speech impairment, and neuropsychological effects. This first comprehensive review of neurological sequelae induced by H₂S and cyanide poisonings identified knowledge gaps in the prevalence of these sequelae and cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying them. It is unclear whether these sequelae are reversible. There are no FDA-approved drugs for the prevention or treatment of these sequelae. Notably, patients who received life-saving therapy still developed delayed neurological sequelae. Full article

Xishu Gardens, an exemplary narrative of classical Chinese gardens, faces challenges in preserving its commemorative spatial structures while accommodating modern visitors’ needs. While trajectory analysis is critical, existing studies struggle to interpret multi-dimensional perception-preference data owing to spatiotemporal mismatches in multi-source datasets. This study adopted an improved Ward–K-medoids hybrid clustering algorithm to analyze 885 trajectory samples and 34,384 synchronized data points capturing emotional valence, cognitive evaluations, and dwell time behaviors via panoramic digital twins across three heritage sites (Du Fu Thatched Cottage, San Su Shrine, and Wangjiang Tower Park). Our key findings include the following: (1) Axial bimodal patterns: Type I high-frequency looping paths (27.6–68.9% recurrence) drive deep exploration, in contrast to Type II linear routes (≤0.5% recurrence), which enable intensive node coverage. (2) Layout-perception dynamics: single-axis layouts maximize behavioral engagement (DFTC), free-form designs achieve optimal emotional-cognitive integration (WTP), and multi-axis systems amplify emotional-cognitive fluctuations (SSS). (3) Spatial preference hierarchy: entrance and waterfront zones demonstrate dwell times 20% longer than site averages. Accordingly, the proposed model synchronizes Type II peak-hour throughput with Type I off-peak experiential depth using dynamic path allocation algorithms. This study underscores the strong spatial guidance mechanisms of Xishu Gardens, supporting tourism management and heritage conservation. Full article

Korsakoff syndrome (KS) is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder caused by severe thiamine deficiency. The syndrome is characterized by deficits in explicit memory and executive functions. These impairments severely limit patients with KS in their daily activities like visiting new and familiar places. The aim of the present study was to examine whether patients with KS are still able to learn a route, despite their cognitive impairments. We compared three route learning methods across three groups of patients with KS: passively following the experimenter (PL), trial-and-error learning (TEL), and errorless learning (EL). In the EL group, the participants had to walk towards a landmark that was shown on a tablet by the experimenter, and upon arrival, they had to find and walk towards the next landmark shown by the experimenter. Over 12 training sessions all participants showed improved route retracing performance. There was no difference between the three groups. Moreover, the results indicated positive effects of the walking training on quality of life, physical fitness, and attentional functioning. These promising findings imply that walking training may be beneficial for various aspects of amnestic patients’ daily functioning. It is therefore recommended to integrate route training into standard care for patients with KS. Full article

Influential studies in the history of cartography have argued that map-like representations of space were (virtually) unknown in the Classical Mediterranean world and that the cause of this was an absence of underlying cognitive maps. That is, persons in that time/place purportedly had only route/egocentric-type mental representations, not survey/allocentric ones. The present study challenges that cognitive claim by examining the verbal descriptions of plots of land produced by ancient Roman land-measurers. Despite the prescription of a route-based form, actual representations persistently show a variety of features which suggest the existence of underlying survey-type mental models and the integration of those with the route-type ones. This fits better with current views on interaction between types of spatial representation and of cultural difference in this area. The evidence also suggests a linkage between the two kinds of representations. Full article

Elephants exhibit remarkable cognitive and social abilities, which are integral to their navigation, resource acquisition, and responses to environmental challenges such as climate change and human–wildlife conflict. Their capacity to acquire, recall, and utilise spatial information enables them to traverse large, fragmented landscapes, locate essential resources, and mitigate risks. While older elephants, particularly matriarchs, are often regarded as repositories of ecological knowledge, the mechanisms by which younger individuals acquire this information remain uncertain. Existing research suggests that elephants follow established movement patterns, yet direct evidence of intergenerational knowledge transfer is limited. This review synthesises current literature on elephant navigation and decision-making, exploring how their behavioural strategies contribute to resilience amid increasing anthropogenic pressures. Empirical studies indicate that elephants integrate environmental and social cues when selecting routes, accessing water, and avoiding human-dominated areas. However, the extent to which these behaviours arise from individual memory, social learning, or passive exposure to experienced individuals requires further investigation. Additionally, elephants function as ecosystem engineers, shaping landscapes, maintaining biodiversity, and contributing to climate resilience. Recent research highlights that elephants’ ecological functions can indeed contribute to climate resilience, though the mechanisms are complex and context-dependent. In tropical forests, forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) disproportionately disperse large-seeded, high-carbon-density tree species, which contribute significantly to above-ground carbon storage. Forest elephants can improve tropical forest carbon storage by 7%, as these elephants enhance the relative abundance of slow-growing, high-biomass trees through selective browsing and seed dispersal. In savannah ecosystems, elephants facilitate the turnover of woody vegetation and maintain grassland structure, which can increase albedo and promote carbon sequestration in soil through enhanced grass productivity and fire dynamics. However, the ecological benefits of such behaviours depend on population density and landscape context. While bulldozing vegetation may appear destructive, these behaviours often mimic natural disturbance regimes, promoting biodiversity and landscape heterogeneity, key components of climate-resilient ecosystems. Unlike anthropogenic clearing, elephant-led habitat modification is part of a long-evolved ecological process that supports nutrient cycling and seedling recruitment. Therefore, promoting connectivity through wildlife corridors supports not only elephant movement but also ecosystem functions that enhance resilience to climate variability. Future research should prioritise quantifying the net carbon impact of elephant movement and browsing in different biomes to further clarify their role in mitigating climate change. Conservation strategies informed by their movement patterns, such as wildlife corridors, conflict-reducing infrastructure, and habitat restoration, may enhance human–elephant coexistence while preserving their ecological roles. Protecting older individuals, who may retain critical environmental knowledge, is essential for sustaining elephant populations and the ecosystems they influence. Advancing research on elephant navigation and decision-making can provide valuable insights for biodiversity conservation and conflict mitigation efforts. Full article

Many experiments on distance perception have revealed that there is a difference between perceptual distance and objective distance. It has been accepted that a route with more memorable features will make its perceived distance longer. This study revisited this information storage model and examined how estimations change by repeated journeys in a university campus. While the outcome confirms the existing hypothesis, an unexpected pattern of distance compression by time was found. Spending more years on the campus, the estimation tended to decrease. The rate of decrease was bigger and more distinctively gradual for architecture and female students than non-architecture and male students. At the end, a cognitive threshold hypothesis was suggested as a possible model to explain the complexity of distance perception. Before reaching it, the distance grows along with the knowledge on a route but beyond the point of knowledge saturation, it begins to compress. Full article