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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1463151
This article is part of the Research Topic The Intersection of Psychology, Healthy Behaviors, and its Outcomes View all 42 articles

An Eco-psychological Based Framework for Research on the Physical Environment of Childcare Classrooms and Children's Play Behavior

Provisionally accepted
Chenhao Deng Chenhao Deng 1*Zhiyi Zhao Zhiyi Zhao 2Nur Maizura Ahmad Noorhani Nur Maizura Ahmad Noorhani 3Arniatul Aiza Mustapha Arniatul Aiza Mustapha 3
  • 1 College of Built Environment, Universiti of Technologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Interior Design, College of Art and Design, Jiangxi Institution of Fashion Technology,, Nanchang, China
  • 3 Center of Studies for Interior Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying, Universiti of Technologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Ecological psychology is an approach focus on the perception and behavior of organisms and environments, offering psychological insights for research on children. This study primarily explores the concepts of affordance and behavior setting based on eco-psychological perspective concerning children’s behaviors and environment. Through a review of previous studies, differentiated that affordance theory emphasizes children’s direct perceptions of environmental functions, whereas the concept of behavior setting highlights the dyadic relationship between long-term behaviors and environmental material features. However, existing studies on child-environment interactions often overlook children’s immediate actions in the context of affordance theory and fail to account for the dynamic nature of behavior settings. by integrating the distinctive traits of both theories, this study proposes an anticipatory framework based on ecological psychology to guide research on children’s environments, particularly within the indoor spaces of childcare facilities. Future studies should investigate the connections within this framework through field studies of childcare center environments and observations of children’s actions and behaviors during free play to assess congruence with environmental affordances.

    Keywords: Ecological psychology1, Affordance2, Behavior setting3, Theoretical framework4, Perception-action loop5, Child-environment interdependence6

    Received: 11 Jul 2024; Accepted: 19 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Deng, Zhao, Noorhani and Mustapha. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Chenhao Deng, College of Built Environment, Universiti of Technologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

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