Egocentric updating of remote locations

The study examined whether people update remote spatial locations in unfamiliar environments during physical movement. Participants learned a layout of objects from one perspective and carried out perspective-taking trials after physically rotating to a new perspective in either the same room as learning or in an adjacent room. Prior to rotation in the adjacent room participants were instructed to visualize the objects as being around them. Responses to perspective-taking trials involved either pointing or verbal labeling. In both testing environments, participants pointed more efficiently from imagined perspectives aligned with either the initial learning perspective or their current facing orientation than from a novel imagined perspective; this indicates that they had updated the encoded spatial relations during the physical rotation and treated remote objects as immediate. Differences in performance among perspectives were less pronounced for verbal labeling in both environments, suggesting that this response mode is more flexibly used from imagined perspectives.     

Housing-Related Subjective Well-Being in Turin (Italy) and Havana (Cuba): Dimensions and Prediction

In the present study, we conceptualized housing-related subjective well-being (HRSWB) as a three-dimensional construct, defined by positive and negative emotions related to housing and housing satisfaction. Moreover, we predicted the construct via a mediated model, with the objective characteristics of the household as exogenous variables and its subjective evaluation as a mediator. A survey performed on 409 participants (285 residents in Torino, Italy, women = 52.3%, M_age = 42.81, SD = 12.73, and 124 residents in Havana, Cuba, women = 58.1%, M_age = 40.48, SD = 19.21) showed that fewer square meters per capita and living in an apartment had a negative association with perceived housing quality, which in turn had a positive association with HRSWB. Home ownership was not associated with HRSWB. The model was invariant across genders, age classes, and cities of residence. Possible developments and limitations of this research are discussed.