Determine the impact of Emotive Intelligent Spaces on children’s behavioural and cognitive outcomes

TL;DR

This study explores how a colorful, adaptive space affects young children's self-regulation and memory, finding mixed results.

Contribution

The novel use of Emotive Intelligent Spaces with adaptive lighting to influence children's behavior is introduced.

Findings

Group means of self-regulation scores were higher during intervention conditions.

Working memory scores were lower during intervention conditions.

No statistically significant differences were found between baseline and intervention conditions.

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the impact of a novel environmental intervention—Emotive Intelligent Spaces (EIS) on young children’s self-regulation and working memory using a single-subject reversal design (ABAB). EIS is a semi-private space with coloured lights that could adapt to each child’s preferred colour based on the child’s self-reported emotional state. A total of 29 three-to-seven-year-old participants completed the experiment from fall 2020 to summer 2021. Self-regulation was measured by the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task; working memory was measured by the Woodcock-Johnson Numbers Reversed subset. Children’s age was controlled as a covariate. Descriptive statistics indicated that the group means of self-regulation scores were higher in the intervention conditions. However, the group means of working memory scores were lower in the intervention conditions. We conducted repeated measure ANCOVA for the main analysis, and results showed no statistically significant differences in children’s self-regulation and working memory scores between baseline and intervention conditions. It is recommended that future studies should take the illuminance level into consideration of the intervention effect. Further, our study implies that avoiding visual overstimulation in the classroom (e.g. heavily decorated walls) may create an optimal level of visual arousal and promote focused attention.

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