Psychology is a study with multiple layers. It explores the complex nature of humans and everything that influences them. This is why this study has so many aspects, focuses and points of view. For generations the scholars and experts have been researching the dimensions of human minds, the factors that impact them, the outcomes that occur from these impacts and the effects they have on human lives and behaviors. Environmental psychology is one of the branches of psychology; it is inter-dimensional as it touches various other studies and directions of psychology.
Environmental psychology is a study that is focused on exploring people within their environments; it studies the settings that surround people on various stages of their lives and the influences they produce on the individuals, their ways of thinking, behaviors and personality traits. The environments studied by the environmental psychology include people’s natural habitat, physical settings, their social surroundings, their experiences and up-bringing, the informational patterns that shape their self-identification process.
For generations various psychologists and philosophers have been arguing whether a way of thinking and mentality in humans are the features we are born with or they occur and develop due to the outer influences and factors. This argument is also known as the debate of nature versus nurture. The argument gathers the supporters of the belief that a human mind is a blank sheet when we are born, and the followers of the idea that some of our character traits and qualities are inherited and are already there when a baby first sees this world. The answer to the question if we are programmed to be certain way by our genetics or we are shaped by our surroundings is indefinite.
These days, many scholars believe that the interaction between the human nature and the process of nurturing is the main force that stimulates our development. One of the most important milestones of the developmental psychology is the influence of the physical and natural surroundings on the process of child development. This is one of the happenings explored by the environmental psychology. The scholars research the effects of negative and stressful physical surroundings on the social, cognitive and emotional development of children.
In order to identify the connections between these aspects of the child development and physical surroundings the researchers observe and monitor the children growing up in noisy and overcrowded places, because the noises of moving transport, voices of other people and music are the sounds children are most often exposed to. The researches revealed the connection between the environmental factors such as noise and the children’s abilities to study, their long-term memory and cognitive development in general.
It turns out that in order to adapt to the environments filled with chronic loud noises children unconsciously learn to ignore some of the auditory factors. As a result, they start to have impairments in speech recognition and understanding. Children from noisy environments have significant learning delays. Besides, it is also important that such children grow up surrounded by adults suffering from constant noise exposure, who are often fatigued, nervous and impatient.
Environmental factors that actively participate in people’s lives and child development are various and multiple. They need to be studied so that the experts could identify all the connections and impacts they have on humans. Reducing or eliminating negative environmental influences can help to significantly improve the public health and quality of life.