Draft 1: Environment's Affects on Moods Through the Five Senses

This topic submitted by Lynzi, Davida, Luciano, Emily T, & Jessica ( mccalela@muohio.edu ) on 10/8/04 .

Natural Systems 1 Syllabus---Western Program---Miami University

Natural Systems I Luciano Carfagna
Chris 10am TR Lynzi McCaleb
October 7, 2004 Davida Popik
Student-Generated Lab Jessica Roy
Proposal-First Draft Emily Tuttle

INTRODUCTION:
Our question pertains to the possibility of an innate link between humans and nature. Specifically, we would like to investigate whether a natural environment and the elements within it can have a significant affect on the moods of Miami students, whether calming or disturbing. Our question is: when the 5 senses are tested, are students on Main Campus or students on Western Campus more prone to natural environments? Our hypothesis is that students on Western Campus will be more prone to a natural environment, while students on Main Campus will be more prone to an artificial environment. Some alternative hypotheses include the following:
-Western Campus students will be more prone to an artificial environment, while
Main Campus students will be more prone to a natural environment.
-Neither Western Campus or Main Campus students will be prone to a natural
environment.
-Both Western Campus and Main Campus students will be prone to a natural
environment.
-There will be no significant differentiation that allows for an assumption in either
direction.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
As society evolves more and more, a higher percentage of what we encounter is artificial. We can use our five senses to determine whether or not something is natural. We have the sense of touch. Human hands have about 100,000 nerves they use for textile purposes (Hancock). Hancock then tells us that the tongue, lips, and fingertips are the most "touch- sensitive" parts of the body. People can also use their sense of smell, Olfaction to verify artificiality. "Odors are hypothesized to affect consumers by changing approach/avoidance behaviors, altering mood state and affecting elaboration" (Ellen). The most complicating factor in this lab is that all the senses over lap: your sense of smell to assist your sense of taste; the tongue has both tasted and nerve receptors; and so on. Flavor is composed of taste (gustation), smell (olfaction), and the tactile sensation (Margolskee). With all the senses helping and communicating with each other, it makes for a very complex world. But the big question is do people prefer a more natural world (environment). We believe that they do because of natural tendencies and habits. Why would man be so eager to make things seem more natural if they didn't find themselves drawn to it?

LITERARY REVIEW:
1. Taste ~ http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/SUA14/taste42k.html
Tasteful Research. Sean Henahan, Access Excellence
2. Sound ~ CAST Universal Design for Learning, www.cast.org/udl/index.cfm?i=352
last update 8/17/2000. c.1999-2004, 40 Harvard Mills Square, Foundry Street, Wakefield MA 01880-3233, USA
3. Smell ~ Social issue Research Centre http://www.sirc.org/publik/smell_emotion.html
4. Sound ~ http://www.bobjanuary.com/musicmnd.htm
5. Smell ~ Aromatherapy http://www.massagemag.com/2000/issue85/research85.htm
6. Touch ~ The Sensory System
7. Sight ~ http://www.fact-index.com/v/vi/visual_perception.html
8. All ~ http://www.cfs.purdue.edu/fdsnutr/fn453/ld_sensy.html preferences
9. http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article3886.html
10. http://users.tpg.com.au/users/amcgann/body/senses.html
11. http://www.eyedesignbook.com/ch6/eyech6-c-links-a12ss.html
EYE DESIGN BOOK Curt Deckert - curt@cdeckert.com
12. http://www2.townonline.com/lexington/localRegional/view.bg?
articleid=96111
Discover scents, sights, sounds of earlier times By Brooke Leister Thursday, September 30, 2004
13. The Handy Guide to Touch by Johns Hopkins Magazine
Publication Date: April 1995
SIRS Researcher pg 32-35
14. Scents in The Marketplace: Explaining a Fraction of Olfaction. Bone, Paula Fitzgerald
15. Ellen, Pam Scholder
Journal of Retailing; Summer99, Vol. 75 Issue 2, p243, 20p, 4charts, 1 diagram
16. In the Mind's Eye: Our Emerging Visual Culture. World & I
Pub. Sept. 1999. pg 22-41
17. The Serene Scene. Copley News Service. Pub. April 4, 2001
18, The Five Senses. Focus. Pub. Sept. 1995. pg 41-49.
19.http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/O/Olfaction.html
20. http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/staff/jacob/teaching/sensory/
21. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000641D5-F855-1C70-84A9809EC588EF21
Making Sense of Taste. David V. Smith and Robert F. Margolskee March 2001 issue of Scientific America.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:
The materials needed for our investigation are fairly simple. We will choose forty students to act as test subjects: twenty Western Campus students and twenty Main Campus students. We have a preliminary survey (attached at the end of this proposal) that will be given to every test subject. For the experiments, we will use four sets of two comparison items for each of the five senses. In experiments where senses other than the one being tested might hinder an accurate reaction, blindfolds, nose plugs, or earplugs might be used. Each member of our lab group will need to have a notepad and writing utensil in order to take notes on each subject's reactions.
Our methods will be based less on measurements or scientific data, and more on survey responses and our observations of the reactions of the test subjects to the experimental tests. Each person in our group is assigned to one of the five senses. We will each take eight of our test subjects at a time and with only a preliminary questionnaire sheet, we will test them. We will each have four sets of comparisons, where two objects or pictures may be shown, smelled, tasted, touched, or heard one right after the other and then
ask the person which one made them feel more comfortable; which one (A or
B) he or she enjoyed the most. We will also carefully observe their reactions to each object or picture based on facial expression or muscle tension. The experiments are "blind experiments" for the subjects since they will not be informed as to which (A or B) is related to a natural environment and which is related to an artificial environment. These subjects will stay in their assigned groups, two groups of four western majors and four main campus majors. After one sense test is finished, the four groups rotate to the next member of our lab group to be tested on a different sense.
The objects and comparisons used to test each sense are chosen due to thorough research on individual topics as well as the five senses together. Natural environments tend to be more complex and irregular, while artificial environments are simplistic and regular. Therefore, a set for sound might be a single note on the piano compared to a whole chord; one will be assigned to A and one to B, differing for each set. In this particular case, the single note stands for an artificial environment and a chord stands for the more complex natural environment. Both A and B will be played and the reaction of the subject will be noted as well as their answer to our questioning about which they liked better, was more pleasant or appealing, and if either choice was upsetting or disturbing in any way. Note that each individual will be tested alone without the influence of other subjects.
In discussing the best way to gather the information needed to most accurately develop a conclusion regarding whether Western Campus students truly are more prone to a natural environment and Main Campus students are more likely to enjoy an artificial environment, we decided to split ourselves with one person to each of the five senses. Luciano will be testing sound, Lynzi will be testing touch, Davida will be testing sight, Jessica will be testing taste, and Emily will be testing sight.
We will involve our class by assigning some as our subjects if they fit the requirement of being a student living on Western Campus. Our NS class already gave excellent feedback on the comments submitted electronically regarding our experiment. Our class will further be involved by asking for more feedback after presenting our method and once acquired, our data received by our subjects. We will also ask them if they believe it is accurate to say Western Campus students are more prone to a natural environment than Main Campus students or visa versa, once we receive and analyze the data.
We will have a data sheet to be filled out by each of us in the lab group on each sense. This data sheet will have each of the four sets compared listed one through four. "A" will already assigned to the natural or artificial object, sound, etc. Next to each set will be a column to write A or B chosen and next to that a place to write any noted reactions. In cases where the objects used are presented in a gradual form, ranging from completely natural to completely artificial, the data sheet will be altered to comply.
Each of us will also give each subject a quick survey before the experiment begins. This survey will serve as preliminary background information, which could be needed later to explain our results, any significant data, outliers, influential subjects, etc.
After this data is collected and all subjects tested on all five senses, our data will be analyzed separately first, then all together. This will help avoid loss of any significant data which might show up with an individual sense but not when all five are combined. The information gathered would be put into charts, one for each sense and one final chart comparing the two types of subjects, students on Western Campus and Main Campus, and the percentage that responded most pleasantly with a natural-like setting.
As a group, we plan on testing all our subjects during the course of several hours on one given day. If a single subject or two cannot make if, we can reschedule them in later to be tested. They must be notified in advance and tested well before our day to present our data to our class. Time is needed after testing our subjects to analyze our results and to begin to develop with a conclusion.

RESULTS:
As this is our first draft of our proposal, we have not yet done our experiments and obtained results. So for this section, we will instead discuss predictions of possible results, critical variables, and the format of our data sheet.
Our possible results could be that our hypothesis is correct, and that Western Campus students prefer natural environments while Main Campus students prefer artificial environments. But we could also prove ourselves partially or completely wrong, and discover that the reverse of our hypothesis is true, that neither or both groups of students prefer natural environments, or that there is not a significant trend in our data to make any conclusion at all.
Critical variables could include differing personalities and upbringings for individual students regardless of their current location on campus. A student from Main Campus who was raised in the country might prefer a natural setting while a Western Campus student from a large city could prefer an artificial setting. Other variables might include heritage or culture, gender, an individual's ability to decide which elements please he or she most, and the possibility that a test subject is lying, either purposefully or through self-deception.
To obtain our results each of us will ask questions that give us a "yes" or "no" on the individual's preference. Our data sheet will have space to record the subjects' preferences to each comparison, along with any observations we make regarding their reactions. We have not finalized it, so this is a tentative model of one. It may change based on alterations in our experiments.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS:
Again, this is the first draft of our proposal, and as we do not have any data or results, we cannot make any concrete conclusions. Instead we will discuss questions that have been raised when designing this investigation, present an approximate timetable for our lab, and present our ideas for our class demonstration.
Questions that have been raised while developing our idea and proposal or that may arise as we begin our experiments include the following:
-Will any of the senses react in a similar manner to both natural and artificial objects?
-Will gender or where a test subject is from affect the results rather than just the location of where the
person lives on campus?
-Will a person's permanent home environment or the way he or she was brought up affect his or her
choices? For example, if a person was raised eating only organic foods, will he or she be more likely to
choose natural objects over artificial objects?
-Will a person react differently to choosing an artificial or natural object depending on if they are
blindfolded and unaware of which object is which?
-Could other temporary factors affect the choices the subjects make (i.e. their mood at the start of the
experiment, the amount of sleep they received the night before, whether they are hungry)?
-Will the setting of the experiment make a difference in the results? Will a person be more likely to choose
a natural object if the experiment takes place in a natural environment? Or vice versa?
-Will conclusions be able to be drawn if a person reacts differently for each sense?
These questions might be answered after obtaining our results, but some might remain unanswered as variables we cannot control.
Our tentative timetable is based mostly on the deadlines given to us, but also on providing ourselves enough time between performing the experiments and analyzing our results and then creating the final report. On Tuesday, October 12 or Wednesday, October 13, we will have a group meeting to discuss who our test subjects will be. On Saturday, October 16 or Sunday, October 17, we will go to Wal-Mart or another store as a group to purchase any materials we need. By Tuesday, November 2, all members need to have gathered all of their data. Each member will use the following week to analyze his or her own results. On Tuesday, November 9, we will have a group meeting to discuss the results and divide up the remaining work. By Tuesday, November 23, a rough draft of our final lab will be written up. And our final lab report will be completed by Tuesday, December 2. This is an approximate timeline and may be altered.
For our class demonstration, we will begin by explaining our purpose and hypothesis. Then, as a group, we will describe the five senses and name a few examples of testable objects for each. We will explain our methods and how the group plans to go about conducting the experiment. Then we will discuss the possible results and explain factors that may affect the outcome of our results. We will also state alternative hypotheses. When our lab idea is thoroughly explained and discussed, we will ask for volunteers from the class to participate in our experiments and survey. We will also ask for feedback from the class and any ideas they have to add to our experiment.
Although this topic has revealed itself to be much more complicated than we intended, mainly because it is difficult to find research done specifically on this type of study, we are still pursuing it. The affect that environments have on our moods is fascinating, and the knowledge that we gain from this lab could affect where we decide to live on campus in years to come, or even where we make residence later in life.

SURVEY GIVEN TO TEST SUBJECTS:
Name:
Year:
Major:
Birthday:
Where you grew up:
How many people in your graduation class:
# Siblings:
# People you grew up with (in house):
Coffee, tea, soda, or water:
Favorite color:
Extra curricular activities:
Allergies:
Favorite quote:
Where do you shop? :
Favorite super power:
If you could live anywhere, where would it be? :