Papers by Francesco Ruotolo
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of home confinement/social isolation ... more The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of home confinement/social isolation (i.e., lockdown), imposed to reduce large-scale spread of a disease in the population, on the mental health of individuals. Through an online survey during the lockdown (DL) related to COVID-19 (1085 respondents, 627 females, agerange: 18–82) (Italy, 23 April–2 May 2020), we revealed that situational factors, i.e., the presence of children at home and female gender, and psychological factors, i.e., a greater sense of isolation, lower perception of safety outside the home and higher trait anxiety, predicted higher levels of state anxiety (R2 = 0.58). The same factors, but with young age instead of the presence of children, predicted higher levels of perceived stress (R2 = 0.63). Then, these data were compared with those collected after the lockdown (AL) (174 respondents, 128 females, agerange: 19–78) (Italy, 1 July–31 October 2021). The results showed that along with a reduced sense of is...
Buildings
Longer life expectancy and global population growth result in new environmental demands to meet d... more Longer life expectancy and global population growth result in new environmental demands to meet different material and psychological needs across the lifespan. Since the physical environment is a fundamental factor in the quality of life, here we investigated which different indoor features (i.e., colors, materials/textures) have the most positive impact on individuals in terms of emotional reactions and whether these reactions could vary with age. Four groups of participants (i.e., younger adults, adults, middle-aged, elderly, age range 19–86 years) were presented with pictures of five different rooms: (1) Modern (white and cold colors with good-quality essential coverings); (2) Basic (white and blue colors; plastic and metal furniture); (3) Vivacious (red, blue, and green elements; soft-textured materials); (4) Comfort (different shades of blue and green; velvet coverings); (5) Nature (brown, orange, and green colors; wood furniture and leather coverings). Participants underwent a...
2022 IEEE International Conference on Metrology for Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Engineering (MetroXRAINE)
Abstract: Preserving the soundscape and geographic extension of quiet areas is a great challenge ... more Abstract: Preserving the soundscape and geographic extension of quiet areas is a great challenge against the wide-spreading of environmental noise. The E.U. Environmental Noise Directive underlines the need to preserve quiet areas as a new aim for the management of noise in European countries. At the same time, due to their low population density, rural areas characterized by suitable wind are considered appropriate locations for installing wind farms. However, despite the fact that wind farms are represented as environmentally friendly projects, these plants are often viewed as visual and audible intruders, that spoil the landscape and generate noise. Even though the correlations are still unclear, it is obvious that visual impacts of wind farms could increase due to their size and coherence with respect to the rural/quiet environment. In this paper, by using the Immersive Virtual Reality technique, some visual and acoustical aspects of the impact of a wind farm on a sample of subj...
Keeping a large interpersonal space (IPS) is one of the most important measures to counter the CO... more Keeping a large interpersonal space (IPS) is one of the most important measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. The IPS is automatically modulated according to primary affiliation and defence needs aimed at protecting our physical and psychological well-being. Through a multicentric online survey (1293 respondents) in six Italian regions during the lockdown (April-May 2020), we investigated the psychological and situational factors that influenced the regulation of IPS and psychological well-being. The results showed that the IPS was modulated according to perceived rather than actual risk of COVID-19 infection. This perception was influenced by institutional communication and citizen satisfaction in local Healthcare Systems. Higher levels of anxiety, stress and feeling of insecurity, exacerbated by situational factors linked to the context of life, led to an increase in IPS at the expense of psychological well-being. Instead, the possibility to go out and seeing other people wear...
Acta Acustica United With Acustica, 2011
Applied Acoustics, 2021
Abstract Assessing the emotional impact that sounds have on individuals is of fundamental importa... more Abstract Assessing the emotional impact that sounds have on individuals is of fundamental importance. In fact, individuals might choose a particular environment, such as a square or a green urban park, by also considering how positively or negatively the acoustic characteristics of that environment make them feel. However, at the moment, no questionnaire allows to reliably and clearly assess the emotional salience of sounds; that is how positively and negatively a sound is perceived by individuals. Therefore, in the present work, we developed and compared two different questionnaires (A and B) focused on how the sound is affectively assessed (e.g. pleasant, calm) and how it makes people feel (e.g. happy, sad, energetic). The two questionnaires differ mainly in their first part, where Questionnaire A was built starting from the circumplex model of soundscape perception, whereas Questionnaire B was created by focusing on the emotional dimension of sounds. The questionnaires were administered to two different groups of participants. Principal component analysis and reliability analysis showed that Questionnaire B was able to capture more reliably and clearly the Positive and Negative dimensions of the sound than questionnaire A. The implications of these results are discussed in light of recent indications about the need to assess in a clear, reliable and straightforward way the impact of the sound environment on humans.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2021
Egocentric (subject-to-object) and allocentric (object-to-object) spatial reference frames are fu... more Egocentric (subject-to-object) and allocentric (object-to-object) spatial reference frames are fundamental for representing the position of objects or places around us. The literature on spatial cognition in blind people has shown that lack of vision may limit the ability to represent spatial information in an allocentric rather than egocentric way. Furthermore, much research with sighted individuals has reported that ageing has a negative impact on spatial memory. However, as far as we know, no study has assessed how ageing may affect the processing of spatial reference frames in individuals with different degrees of visual experience. To fill this gap, here we report data from a cross-sectional study in which a large sample of young and elderly participants (160 participants in total) who were congenitally blind (long-term visual deprivation), adventitiously blind (late onset of blindness), blindfolded sighted (short-term visual deprivation) and sighted (full visual availability) ...
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2021
This study examines whether the perception of an object automatically activates the representatio... more This study examines whether the perception of an object automatically activates the representation of the direction of use of that object. To this aim, we carried out two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to explicitly categorise objects as used either away from the body (AB, for example, a hammer) or towards the body (TB, for example, a toothbrush). In Experiment 2, participants were asked to judge whether the same objects were natural or manmade. In both experiments, they were asked to respond by moving a joystick backwards (i.e., TB) or frontwards (i.e., AB). Therefore, their response could either be congruent (i.e., backward response with TB objects, frontward response with AB objects) or incongruent (i.e., backward response with AB objects, frontward response with TB objects) with the direction of object use. Results from Experiment 1 showed that in the congruent condition, participants were faster in judging the direction of object use than those in the inc...
Psychological Research, 2020
This study aimed to explore the relationship between action execution and mental rotation modalit... more This study aimed to explore the relationship between action execution and mental rotation modalities. To this end, pantomime gesture (i.e. the mime of the use of an object) was used as its execution relies on imagery processes. Specifically, we tried to clarify the role of visuo-spatial or motor and body-related mental imagery processes in pantomime gestures performed away (AB, e.g. drawing on a sheet) and towards the body (TB, e.g. brushing the teeth). We included an “actual use” condition in which participants were asked to use a toothbrush and make 3, 6, or 9 circular movements close to their mouth (as if they were brushing their teeth) or to use a pencil and make 3, 6, or 9 circular movements on a desk (as if they were drawing circles). Afterwards, participants were asked to pantomime the actual use of the same objects (“pantomime” condition). Finally, they were asked to mentally rotate three different stimuli: hands, faces, and abstract lines. Results showed that participants were faster in AB than TB pantomimes. Moreover, the more accurate and faster the mental rotation of body-related stimuli was, the more similar the temporal duration between both kinds of pantomimes and the actual use of the objects appeared. Instead, the temporal similarity between AB pantomimes and pencil actual use, as well as, the duration of AB pantomime and actual use, were associated with the ability to mentally rotate abstract lines. This was not true for TB movements. These results suggest that the execution of AB and TB pantomimes may involve different mental imagery modalities. Specifically, AB pantomimes would not only require to mentally manipulate images of body-parts in movement but also represent the spatial relations of the object with the external world.
Behavioural Brain Research, 2020
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2019
This study aimed at comparing the time course of the activation of function and manipulation know... more This study aimed at comparing the time course of the activation of function and manipulation knowledge during object identification. The influence of visual similarity and context information was also assessed. In 3 eye-tracking experiments, conducted with the Visual-World-Paradigm, participants heard the name of an object and had to identify it among four pictures. The target object (e.g., "shopping cart") could be presented along with objects related by (a) function (e.g., "basket"), (b) manipulation (e.g., "lawnmower"), (c) context (e.g., "cash register"), (d) visual similarity (e.g., "toaster"), and (e) completely unrelated objects. Growth curve analyses were used to assess competition effects among semantically (a, b and c), visually related (d) and unrelated competitors (e). Results showed that manipulation-and functionrelated, but not context-related objects received more fixations than the unrelated ones, with a temporal advantage for the manipulation-related objects (Experiment 1). However, the visually similar objects faded the semantic competition effects, especially for function-related objects (Experiment 2). Finally, no temporal differences appeared when manipulation-and functionrelated objects were shown within the same visual array (Experiment 3). These results support the idea that both function and manipulation are relevant features of object semantic representations, but in the absence of other semantic competitors the activation of manipulation features appears prioritized during object identification.
Psychological Research, 2018
The aim of this study was to assess how people memorize spatial information of emotionally laden ... more The aim of this study was to assess how people memorize spatial information of emotionally laden landmarks along a route and if the emotional value of the landmarks affects the way metric and configurational properties of the route itself are represented. Three groups of participants were asked to watch a movie of a virtual walk along a route. The route could contain positive, negative, or neutral landmarks. Afterwards, participants were asked to: (a) recognize the landmarks; (b) imagine to walk distances between landmarks; (c) indicate the position of the landmarks along the route; (d) judge the length of the route; (e) draw the route. Results showed that participants who watched the route with positive landmarks were more accurate in locating the landmarks along the route and drawing the route. On the other hand, participants in the negative condition judged the route as longer than participants in the other two conditions and were less accurate in mentally reproducing distances between landmarks. The data will be interpreted in the light of the "feelings-as-information theory" by Schwarz (2010) and the most recent evidence about the effect of emotions on spatial memory. In brief, the evidence collected in this study supports the idea that spatial cognition emerges from the interaction between an organism and contextual characteristics.
Neuropsychology of Space, 2017
After a brief description of how visual information travels from the retina to the cortex, two fu... more After a brief description of how visual information travels from the retina to the cortex, two fundamental distinctions within visuospatial perception are discussed. First, spatial relations between objects can be represented either categorically, “left of” or “above,” or coordinately, in which metric distances are taken into account. These two types of representations are dissociated in terms of neural correlates, regardless of stimulus type and precise task at hand. Recent findings indicate that also the scope of attention as used during spatial relation processing affects this dissociation.
Nowadays the involvement of passengers in acoustic discomfort assessment in public transportation... more Nowadays the involvement of passengers in acoustic discomfort assessment in public transportation systems becomes more and more frequent. Two approaches are usually used: onfield and laboratory studies. On-field studies are characterized by direct interviewing passengers during trips. Instead, laboratory studies consist of listening sounds recorded in real transportation systems, sometimes combining it with still or moving images reproduction. The aim of this research is to compare two different noise assessment methods: Audio-only vs Audio+Video. In Audio-only condition participants listened to the sound patterns of metros, whereas in Audio+Video condition participants listened to the same sounds while were fully immersed in virtual metros. Afterwards, they filled out a questionnaire about the sounds they noticed and reported also the degree of their annoyance/pleasantness. The results showed that noise impact on annoyance/pleasantness was modulated by the presence of visual stimuli. This seems to indicate that acoustic discomfort assessment with unimodal technique is inadequate to capture the complexity of sound perception in an ecological way.
INTER-NOISE and NOISE-CON Congress and Conference Proceedings, Jun 13, 2010
"This paper introduces a procedure for acoustic discomfort assessment and describes a study ... more "This paper introduces a procedure for acoustic discomfort assessment and describes a study of the human perception of the sound environment inside metro cars. Laboratory tests were conducted by combining immersive virtual reality equipment and soundtracks, recorded aboard world great cities’ metros, having noticeably different temporal and spectral characteristics, and composed of specific events. The approach has the advantage of ensuring ecological validity by trying to reproduce the multisensory way in which sounds are perceived in everyday life. The detailed analysis of noise stimuli psychoacoustic parameters and corresponding psychological reactions was fulfilled. The experiment shows general preferences of listeners and the influence of different noise characteristics on cognitive performances, and makes it possible to compare the results of acoustical measurements with a range of subjective effects."
Nowadays, virtual technology with embedded virtual agents is increasingly present in everyday lif... more Nowadays, virtual technology with embedded virtual agents is increasingly present in everyday life. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of psychological experience in social interaction with virtual agents can be useful for theoretical and application purposes. Here, we aim to understand whether individual differences in empathy can influence social interaction with virtual agents. To this end, we designed a correlational study comparing individual propensity towards empathic traits and the ability to take the perspective of a virtual agent (VA) to understand whether and how they are associated. In an Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) scenario, participants had to locate a glass according to the perspective of a virtual agent. They were seated behind a circular virtual table around which, in various positions closer and further away, VAs with a glass placed in front of them could appear. Participants had to decide whether the glass was to the right or left of the VA's body midline. The results showed an association between some components of empathy and localization time: the higher the tendency to identify with a fictional character, the faster the participants were to locate the glass in all positions of the virtual agents around the table. Likewise, the higher the tendency to experience feelings of empathy, the faster they were in locating only when the VA was close to the observer. These preliminary results suggest that individual differences in empathy and the location of virtual agents help define how people experience virtual social interactions.
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Papers by Francesco Ruotolo