9350276 TASSINARY This award provides support to Dr. Louis Tassinary under the National Science Foundation's Presidential Faculty Fellows (PFF) Program. The PFF Program was established at the request of the President of the United States to recognize and support the scholarly activities of some of the Nation's most outstanding science and engineering faculty members early in their careers. Awards are intended to allow Fellows to undertake self-designed, innovative research and teaching projects, to establish research and teaching programs, and to pursue other academic related activities. This award will allow the investigator to pursue his research agenda of attempting to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of physiological signals as measures of psychological processes and states. Although converging scientific evidence from laboratories throughout the world suggests that non- invasive measurement of physiological activity within specific assessment contexts can provide information on the duration and character of specific psychological processes, the generalizability of these relationships to real-world settings remains untested. Dr. Tassinary will test the boundary conditions on these relationships through the experimental assessment of typical human transactions with simulated built and natural environments. The theoretical level of analysis will not be restricted to isolated components of the body or the environment, but will focus on the level of organismic-environmental transactions, with reference to both the physical and socio-cultural environment. This research addresses a critical question involving whether human contact with ambient conditions of varying physical form and content influence our cognitive and emotional reactions. Thus far, there exists only self-report data to make judgments about how different configurations of the design environment influence individuals. Using a combination of environmental simulat ion and state of the art psychophysiological recording and data analysis resources, Dr. Tassinary is at the forefront of a new field of research in environmental psychology. This five year award will also enable him to train undergraduate and graduate students in this critically important field. ***
