The social and neurosciences are moving toward a conceptualization of the psychological construct of sense of place in relation with spatial cognition, place imageability, and meaning. To help advance progress, this dissertation proposes a conceptual framework of sense of place that includes variables of spatial navigational strategy (i.e., egocentric and allocentric) and place imageability using notions of edges, paths, landmarks, districts, nodes. Three studies using different methods tested the proposed framework. Study 1 used a questionnaire and an interview-based protocol analysis to examine whether navigational strategy associated with participants’ levels of sense of place for recalled urban neighbourhoods. Preliminary work investigating whether sense of place and spatial navigation varied with place imageability was also done using qualitative analyses. Participants used more egocentric and allocentric strategies during cognitive map navigation when sense of place was stronger compared to when they recalled places for which they felt weak or neutral levels of sense of place. Seven categories were revealed from participants’ qualitative descriptions of urban place visualizations after completing three sense of place scales (i.e., home-sense, compactness, environment, safety, vibrancy, design, and aesthetics) and differed depending on sense of place condition. Study 2 enabled participants to articulate recollections of settings for which they felt different strengths of sense of place via a cognitive mapping task. Results reinforced the notion that individuals who experience a strong level of sense of place for an urban environment also recall more of the physical features that make it imageable. Existing literature was confirmed by this study’s results that paths and landmarks are integral to urban place imageability. Study 3 gathered information about community members’ current representations of their urban neighbourhood. Results supported hypotheses based on results of Studies 1 and 2. Nodes, edges, and landmarks were found to be particularly meaningful to residents’ spatial understanding of their neighbourhood. The fact that more allocentric strategies than egocentric strategies were used in each of the three place imageability conditions (compared to non-significant differences in sense of place conditions in Study 1) highlights compelling future research questions concerning the three variables of the proposed conceptual framework of sense of place. Similar to Study 1, qualitative analyses in Study 3 revealed paths as the predominant meaningful place imageable feature noted by residents. Thematic information about the features in each area reported to have meaning for residents indicate the categories of environment, aesthetics, and design as most prevalent. As a whole, this dissertation can inform future environmental psychology research, as well as the practices of urban planners, as they consider spatial navigation and place imageable attributes in relation to the psychological construct of sense of place in urban environments. Planners and researchers alike may benefit from this dissertation as they respond to human spatial needs while facilitating a sense of attachment and identity toward, and compatibility with, city spaces. Finally, findings may assist social scientists in clarifying how sense of place develops in urban neighbourhoods, and how it is experienced over time. / Graduate

A more water-coherent approach is postulated as a primary pathway through which biophilic urbanism contributes to livability and climate change adaptation. Previous studies have shown that upstream water retention is more cost-effective than downstream for mitigating flood risks downstream. This dissertation proposes a research design for generating an iconography of water urbanism to make upstream cities more coherent. I tested a hypothesis of aquaphilic urbanism as a water-based sense of place that evokes water-based place attachment to help adapt cities and individuals to water-coherent urbanism. Cognitive mapping, photovoice, and emotional recall protocols were conducted during semi‐structured interviews with 60 residents and visitors sampled from eight water-centric cities in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. The participants provided 55 sketch maps. I performed content analyses, regression analyses, path analyses, and mediation analyses to study the relationships of 1) pictorial aquaphilia (intrinsic attachment to safe and clean water scenes) and waterscape imageability, 2) waterscape imageability and the coherence of city image, 3) egocentric aquaphilia (attachment to water-based spatial anchors) and allocentric aquaphilia (attachment to water-centric cities), and 4) the coherence of city image, allocentric aquaphilia, and openness towards water-coherent urbanism. Content analyses show that waterscape imageability and pictorial aquaphilia were the two most common reasons why participants mentioned the five waterscape types, including water landmarks, canals, lakes, rivers, and harbors, during the three recall protocols. Regression analyses indicate that water is a sixth element of imageability and that the imageable structure of canals and rivers and the identifiability of water landmarks significantly influenced the aesthetic coherence of city image. Path analyses suggest that allocentric aquaphilia can be attributed to water-based familiarity, water-based place identity (or identifiability), water-based comfort, and water-based place dependence (or orientation) evoked by water-based spatial anchors. Mediation analyses reveal that water-based goal affordance (as a construct of water-based comfort and water-based place dependence) aided environmental adaptation, while water-based imageability (as a construct of water-based familiarity and water-based place identity) helped adapt cities and individuals to water-coherent urbanism. Canal mappability mediated the effects of gender and of visitor versus resident on the coherence of city image to facilitate environmental adaptation.

Detta är ett examensarbete som görs inom ämnet informationsdesign och rumslig gestaltning. Studien syftar till att undersöka orienterbarheten av en kreativ grundskola med profilinriktningarna dans, musik, teater och konst. I dagens likformiga skolmiljö med bristande vägvisning är det svårt att tolka sin position, riktning och överhuvudtaget se att det är en estetisk skola. Mer specifikt undersöker studien orienterbarheten till skolans profilområden för att stärka platsidentiteten, platstillhörigheten och förstagångsbesökarens förmåga att orientera och förstå platsen. Studien bygger på teorier inom wayshowing, orientering, kognition, perception och rumslig kommunikation och hur detta kan sammanfogas i ett gestaltningsförslag som väger in barnens perspektiv på vad deras profiler betyder för dem och hur det kan ta uttryck i den rumsliga gestaltningen. Studien tar ett deltagande designperspektiv och inkluderar barnens perspektiv i hela processen. Studien undersöker hur de tolkar dagens skolmiljö, deras orienteringsförmåga, vilka visuella element som stödjer förstagångsanvändarens mentala bild idag, samt i förståelsen för vad deras profil betyder för dem och hur det kan ta uttryck i korridorerna för att kommunicera och vägleda med platsidentiteten. Utifrån teoretisk grund och insamlad empiri presenteras ett gestaltningsförslag som utgår från Entréskolan i Örebro. Gestaltningsförslaget och processen som redovisas visar på hur barn kan inkluderas och involveras i en designprocess och låta deras idéer inspirera och komma till uttryck i de lokaler de spenderar stor del av sin tid i samtidigt som miljön får en starkare platsidentitet och orienterarbarhet. / This is a thesis project conducted within the field of information design, spatial design. The study aims to investigate the orientability of a creative primary school with specialized profiles in dance, music, theatre, and art. In today's homogeneous school environment with insufficient wayfinding, it is difficult to interpret one's position, direction, and even recognize the school as an aesthetic institution. More specifically, the study examines the navigability to the school's specialized profiles to enhance place identity, place attachment, and the ability of first-time visitors to orient themselves and understand the place. The study is based on theories in wayshowing, orientation, cognition, perception, and spatial communication and how these can be integrated into a design proposal that considers children's perspectives in what their profiles mean to them and how it can be expressed in the spatial design. The study takes a participatory design approach and includes children's perspectives throughout the process. This study examines how they interpret today’s school environment, their orientation ability, which visual elements support their mental image and seeks to understand their perception of their profile and how can be expressed in the corridors to communicate place identity. Based on the theoretical framework and collected empirical data, a design proposal is presented based on the Entréskolan in Örebro. The design proposal and process presented demonstrate how to involve and include children and let their ideas inspire and be expressed in the spaces they spend a large part of their time in, while also creating a stronger sense of place identity and orientability.

In this thesis, I investigate idiom processing from two angles through three different studies. First, I approached idiom processing from a constraint-based perspective. According to this view, not all idioms are alike: they can differ regarding lexical, and linguistic characteristics, such as their level of familiarity. In this first study, I investigated the underlying processes during the comprehension of idioms with different characteristics. I used the Event Related Potential (ERP) technique, which has high temporal resolution, to investigate this issue. I provided evidence that idioms' characteristics impact their processing. More specifically, idioms which are more familiar to language users (i.e., the ones that are encountered more frequently) showed processing facilitation compared to less familiar idioms. Also, idioms with plausible literal interpretation showed processing advantages over idioms which are less likely to be interpreted literally. The second aim of the current thesis was to investigate idiom processing from an embodied account of language processing. According to this view, various sources of information (including linguistic, affective, and sensory-motor) are available and used during the comprehension of language. While, this view has become popular in many language processing studies, studies of idiom processing are still at the beginning of this journey. To be able to investigate idiom processing while considering the role of affective and sensory-motor factors, we require access to norming data. In the second (descriptive) study, I conducted a large-scale survey and collected measures of valence, arousal, concreteness, and imageability for a set of English idioms, by both native speakers of English and proficient second language speakers. In the last study, I explored how the emotional status of idioms and their concreteness contributes to their processing, and whether this contribution is modulated by idiom familiarity. We found that the impact of non-linguistic sources of information (affective and sensory-motor) is determined by idiom familiarity, such that low familiar and high familiar idioms show different behaviour where these factors are concerned. For highly familiar idioms, behaviour aligns with the findings on word processing: for example, idioms with more positive valence showed facilitative processing. Unlike highly familiar idioms, valence had an inhibitory impact on idioms with low familiarity level, such that greater valence increased the reading time.

Human environment perceptual relationships have significant effects on human psychology in urban spaces. The concepts of urban legibility and imageability concentrate on these relationships and define components to create livable places by organizing the physical structure. However, determining legibility components is not sufficient in order to define whether a place legible or not. This thesis explores Gestalt laws of perception can be used to re-define the relationships among legibility components by setting some guidelines. The main aim of this thesis is to find out how far planning is successful in creating legible environments which is evaluated by legibility guidelines set. The thesis also aims to explore issues that make an environment more readable than others. To this end, &Ccedil / ayyolu district containing several sub-districts which are recently developed by plans are examined in a comparable way. The result of the analyses show that the concepts of legibility and imageability are underestimated in planning practices in &Ccedil / ayyolu which is based on two-dimensional subdivisions of lands and three dimensional determination of bulks of structures. In other words, the &Ccedil / ayyolu district does not provide a legible environment and a whole structure for observers that their psychological needs should be met.

It has long been held that concrete material has a processing advantage over abstract material, as predicted by Dual Coding Theory (Paivio,1991), although this has been challenged. For example, based on evidence for behavioural and neuroscientific studies, Kousta,, Vigliocco, Vinson, & Del Campo, (2011) proposed that emotional valance had a greater influence in the processing of abstract words, and that under some circumstances there may be no concreteness effect and might even be an abstractness effect. This would not be predicted by DCT. In addition, Isen and Daubman (1984) have claimed that emotional valence, and particularly positive emotion can influence cognitive processing. Specifically, they demonstrated that positive emotion was associated with more inclusive categorization of ambiguous category members. This current study was a 2 x 2 between group design to investigate the effect of positive and negative valence on recognition memory for concrete and abstract words and on categorization. Contrary to what was predicted by Dual Coding Theory, abstract words were generally better recognized than concrete, with there being an additional interaction with valence. A significant interaction between word type and valence on categorization was also found. Results partially support Kousta et al. (2011).

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(in English): In many studies there was demonstrated that word's imageability - the ability of a word to produce a mental image of it's referent - affects the processing of its inflection (e.g. Prado - Ullman, 2009), its acquisition (e.g. McDonough et al., 2011) and the acquisition of grammatical morphemes (Smolík, in press). This thesis builds on the Smolík's paper, and its goal is to test whether the imageability of a word's stem influences the acquisition of its inflections in Czech children. Word imageability ratings and ratings of other variables that were assumed to affect the process of the acquisition of word inflections, were collected, then questionnaires were distributed to parents to examine how the forms of chosen words are acquired by children. The focus was on the acquisition of nominative plural of nouns, present tense in second person and past tense of verbs. The results show that the imageability significantly predicts the age of acquisition of the nominative in singular and all observed forms of verbs. The absence of the imegability effect on the acquisition of nominative in plural may be due to the overall high imageability and thus reduced variability of ratings in nouns in our dataset. Two possible explanations of the imageability effect on the acqusition of morphological...

Les terrains vacants sont, à Montréal, des éléments indéniables dans la composition de la trame urbaine. Leur présence soutenue intéresse déjà depuis longtemps de nombreux auteurs et décideurs municipaux. Toutefois, il s’avère que l’on connaît peu les caractéristiques paysagères de ces espaces. Cette recherche en aménagement vise à compléter nos connaissances sur cette typologie d’espace urbain. Elle porte sur la caractérisation paysagère des terrains vacants du centre-ville de Montréal et sur l’étude de leur potentiel visuel à mettre en valeur les attributs significatifs du paysage urbain. Ces deux études doivent permettre de comprendre le rôle joué par ces vides dans la perception du paysage urbain. Cette démarche s’interroge sur la possibilité que certains vides puissent être justifiés et légitimés en regard de la notion de lisibilité du paysage urbain (Lynch, 1976, 1982). Les terrains joueraient un rôle important au niveau de la perception des paysages urbains. Il s’agit de démontrer le potentiel des espaces vacants dans la mise en valeur du paysage urbain, dans l’optique, pour certains d’entre eux, de légitimer le vide ou une partie du vide qui les définit, de les rendre structurants dans la composition urbaine. Grâce à un travail d’observation des caractéristiques urbaines, contextuelles, visuelles et physiques, l’étude a pu à la fois dresser le portrait de ces espaces en attente de développement urbain et démontrer leur implication dans la lisibilité urbaine. Ce travail présente l’intérêt d’offrir un énoncé sur la planification du développement des terrains vacants du centre-ville de Montréal en regard de la notion de lisibilité urbaine partie prenante dans la qualité urbaine. / In Montreal, vacant lots are undeniable elements in the composition of the urban pattern. For a long time, their sustained presence has interested various authors (Lévesque, Prost, etc.) and municipal authorities. However, it turns out that we know little about the landscape character assessment of these spaces. This research seeks to complete our knowledge of this typology of urban spaces in Downtown Montreal trough a landscape character assessment and a study of their visual potential. Those two studies will underline the role of these voids in the urban landscape perception. Some vacant lots are maybe part of a good urban imageability. This study assumes that vacant lots have an important role with regards to the urban landscape perception. By collecting information which refers to urban, contextual, visual and physical characteristics, observations were able to prove that there is a relationship between the urban imageability and the voids generated by the vacant lot. It demonstrated the potential of those spaces to enhance the urban landscape by their structuring abilities. This study proposes a first glimpse of a coherent planning for the development of downtown vacant lots, in particular, through the notion of imageability as an integral part of the urban quality.

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