Citation

Stamps AE. Environ. Behav. 2005; 37(1): 102-133.

Affiliation

(artstamps@worldnet.att.net)

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0013916504266806

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Previous work in neurophysiology suggests that enclosure is such an important feature of the environment that there is a specific region in the brain responding directly to environmental enclosure. Previous experimental work suggested that 5 environmental features cause impressions of enclosure: the proportion of the scene covered by walls, the proportion of the scene covered by ground, how light or dark the scene is, the depth of view, and the number of sides open at the front of the scene. Direct quantitative replication of these results was obtained for a sample of 21 artificial scenes. Responses of judged safety were also obtained. Safety was most strongly correlated with the lightness of the scene (r = .82).