Sound Heard Research Articles

The The body and sound as stimulators of interactive processes in young people with special educational needs

Introduction: Inserted in the development of a digital musical instrument, the Digital Sock, we present in this document the results obtained from the analysis of the psycho-pedagogical interactive cycle in which we investigate the instrument as a sound stimulation tool in interactive processes between body-instrument-environment. Objetives: Analysis of the psych pedagogical interaction cycle that investigates the relationship between body and sound, with the new instrument, the Digital Sock, as a stimulating device for communicational processes. Methods: The methodology used for this investigation was action research. In the first phase, we conducted a psychopedagogical intervention with young people in Special Education. In the second phase, we conducted a Case Study with a young man diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. For data collection we used audiovisual media and field diary, focused interview, participant observation and document analysis. For the interpretation of the data we performed the discourse analysis and the content analysis. The acting model used during the two phases of practical intervention prioritized the integration of music and body movement (Dalcroze, 1920; Pederiva, 2004; Santiago, 2008; Storolli, 2011); the formation of the scenic gesture (Laban, 1978; Katz, 2005; Miller, 2007; Greiner & Amorim, 2010; Miller, 2012; Amaral, 2015; Roquet, 2017); ludic practice (Lapierre, 1982; Fonseca, 2001; Acouturier & Lapierre, 2004; Vieira, Batista & Lapierre, 2005); creative improvisation (Nordoff & Robins, 1959; Bruscia, 1999) and the belief that sound and music enable peer communication (Benenzon, 1981; Whipple, 2004). Results: The body-sound relationship as a means of expression has shown to be able to stimulate creative processes and the development of critical and reflexive thinking. All the activities developed during the meetings prioritized the body-sound relationship. The analysis of the narratives showed that the message propagated by the sock (the sonority) was understood as a reaction to the sound heard during the exercise (with individual encoding and decoding) and expressed through the eyes of the hands, facial expression and body balance - subtle movements, more visible than the broad movements. Conclusions: The interpretation of the data led us to conclude that Digital Sock, perceived as a psychopedagogical tool for sound and gestural stimulation, favours the development of scenic-musical narratives in young people with Special Educational Needs.

Introduction: The Religious Structure of Phenomena—A Phenomenological Investigation

Introduction: The Religious Structure of Phenomena—A Phenomenological Investigation

Vibroacoustic measurements and analysis of blasting works

Blasting works cause short-term high-energy shock waves - acoustic, air (airblast) and paraseismic. The duration of the event can be up to 2-3 seconds, while the rise time to the peak value is directly related to the delay between the individual explosive material (EM) and the firing sequence and ranges from a few to several milliseconds. Their propagation in the environment can affect people, animals and construction structures located not only in the close but also further distance from their source. If EM is placed on the surface of the earth during the detonation, the shock wave spreads evenly in all directions in the half-space, and when the detonation follows in rock, the wave usually travels in one direction and is accompanied by a paraseismic wave. However, the sound heard when detonating is part of the wave spectrum in the band from 20 to 20000 Hz, while the airblast itself has a frequency of less than 20 Hz. Since at some distance from the detonated EM, the parameters of the airblast are close to the parameters of the acoustic wave, the method of spreading the acoustic wave depends to a great extent on atmospheric conditions, i.e. density, temperature and humidity of the air, and from wind speed and its direction. To get to know the essence of the phenomenon of the impact of blasting works, measurements are carried out considering the propagation conditions, i.e. meteorological conditions as well as vibration analysis in the ground itself and on the building substructure. This paper presents the results of research carried out by the Authors in terms of the correct assessment of the impact range (acoustic, airblast, paraseismic waves) during EM detonation placed on the surface.

Empirical evaluation of in-field, binaural record and playback reproduction

This research evaluates a methodology for calibrating in field, sounds for playback in a separate, interior environment. The ability to record sounds in the field and playback them accurately in a different environment is useful when the end user, or listener cannot be present at the location where the sound is being produced live. In forensics, for example, an expert or juror may need to evaluate an acoustic or auditory issue but not have access to the site where the sound is produced. The methodology presented here utilizes a binaural microphone where participants in the field, listen to a physical sound, and calibrate the binaural microphone by adjusting recording levels until the sound heard in their headphones matches the sound being produced live in the field. A second group of participants are presented with the same live physical sound but in an interior environment. Using the same setup, these participants compare the live sound with the recorded and reproduced sound calibrated by the in-field participants. Participants in this second group empirically evaluate the similarity of the reproduced sound to the live physical sound in the interior environment.

Muriel Spark’s ‘informed air’: the auditory imagination and the voices of fiction

ABSTRACT‘Events occur in my mind’, Spark has written, ‘and I record them’. What does it mean to hear something that isn’t there? Hearing inner speech or sounds, not as silent thoughts but as quasi-perceptual events in the world, confounds settled distinctions between perception, memory and imagination that structure our feeling of the real. This essay shows how her capacity for complex ‘listening in’ becomes the mainspring of her brilliance as an experimental writer, cultural observer and fictional ethicist. Eclectic in her sources – including biblical, classical, Romantic, Christian and Jewish mystic and monastic traditions of meditation – Spark reworks the concept of ‘the auditory imagination’ to produce one of the most sustained and innovative self-reflexive performances in modern fiction of the human mind’s capacity to bring to presence and realise other worlds, multiple ontologies. In her writing, fictional vocalisation is the phenomenological and expressive vehicle of an embodied ontology of plural uniqueness that opposes metaphysical reduction to a universal One that invisibly eradicates difference.

Roles of posterior parietal and dorsal premotor cortices in relative pitch processing: Comparing musical intervals to lexical tones

Humans use time-varying pitch patterns to convey information in music and speech. Recognition of musical melodies and lexical tones relies on relative pitch (RP), the ability to identify intervals between two pitches. RP processing in music is usually more fine-grained than that in tonal languages. In Western music, there are twelve pitch categories within an octave, whereas there are only three level (non-glide) lexical tones in Taiwanese (or Taiwanese Hokkien, a tonal language). The present study aimed at comparing the neural substrates underlying RP processing of musical melodic intervals with that of level lexical tones in Taiwanese. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data from fourteen participants with good RP were analyzed. The results showed that imagining the sounds of visually presented musical intervals was associated with enhanced activity in the central subregion of the right dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC), right posterior parietal cortex (PPC), and right dorsal precuneus compared to auditory imagery of visually presented Taiwanese bi-character words with level lexical tones. During the sound-congruence-judgement task (auditory imagery of musical intervals or bi-character words, and subsequently judging if the imagined sounds were melodically congruent with heard sounds), the contrast of the musical minus linguistic conditions yielded activity in the bilateral dPMC-PPC network and dorsal precuneus, with the dPMC activated in the rostral subregion. The central dPMC and PPC may mediate the attention-based maintenance of pitch intervals, whereas the dorsal precuneus may support attention control and the spatial/sensorimotor processing of the fine-grained pitch structures of music. When judging the congruence between the imagined and heard musical intervals, the bilateral rostral dPMC may play a role in attention control, working memory, evaluation of motor activities, and monitoring mechanisms. Based on the findings of this study and recent studies of amusia, we suggest that higher order cognitive operations are critical to the more fine-grained pitch processing of musical melodies compared to lexical tones.

Effect of chewing gum on bowel motility in post operative patients following abdominal surgery: a clinical outcome based study

Background: One very important complication of abdominal surgeries is postoperative ileus which results in severe patient discomfort, prolonged hospitalization, and enhanced treatment cost. This study was conducted with an aim to analyze the clinical outcome of effect of chewing gum mainly to avoid post-operative paralytic ileus in post-operative patients of abdominal surgeries.Methods: In this study total 200 patients were included, 100 were cases and remaining were controls. The cases were given chewing gum to chew after the surgery while the controls were allowed to heal without chewing gums in conventional style and both were observed hourly for clinical outcome.Results: Among cases the mean duration of first sound heard was 26.3 hours while among controls this was 38.8 hours (p<0.001), the mean duration of first flatus passed among cases was 50.7 hours while that among controls was 68.5 hours, the mean duration of first Bowel passed among cases was 92.4 hours while that among controls was 128.3 hours (p<0.001). On comparing cases of routine with emergency surgeries, gastric with small bowel surgeries, and traumatic with pathological bowel surgeries it was observed that the first bowel sound, first flatus and first bowel passed appears significantly earlier in routine surgeries, gastric surgeries and traumatic surgeries respectively.Conclusions: It was observed that chewing gum has significant effect over bowel motility as bowel sounds appeared significantly earlier in cases than control and time for first flatus passed and first bowel passed were also noted significantly earlier in cases than controls. Hospital stay of cases were found significantly lesser than control hence simple intervention like chewing can decrease the burden of disease of paralytic ileus from community.

The Suitability of an Inhibitory Learning Approach in Exposure When Habituation Fails: A Clinical Application to Misophonia

Recent findings have led to a reconceptualization of the mechanisms that account for the efficacy of exposure-based treatments. Termed the “inhibitory learning model,” this approach emphasizes new learning when confronted with previously avoided stimuli rather than merely the cessation of fear or aversive emotional responding. In this paper, we propose the applicability of the inhibitory learning model for conditions and contexts in which simple exposure does not produce habituation. We illustrate this application from an in-progress randomized controlled treatment trial for adults with misophonia. Misophonia is a condition marked by strong aversive reactions to specific sounds. It is a difficult to treat and understudied syndrome. All participants in the trial received exposure, either before or after a stress management module of treatment. Exposure treatment emphasized altered expectancies for the target sounds as well as deliberate practice in hearing sounds on the individually developed hierarchy. Inhibitory learning strategies were employed to increase treatment adherence and commitment, shape patient behavior during exposures, manufacture negative prediction errors, increase perceived control over reactions, and promote learning that generalized to functional improvements. The findings are discussed in the context of future applications of the inhibitory learning model for psychopathology associated with avoidance.

Study on acoustic improvements by sound-absorbing panels and acoustical quality assessment of teleconference systems

With the development of information and communications technology, conferences and remote education using teleconference systems have become common. When a teleconference system is used, the sound heard in a receiving room includes the acoustic characteristics of both the utterance and receiving rooms, in addition to the characteristics of the transmission via the teleconference system and Internet. Even today, when the digital technology is widely used, quality problems related to sound transmission remain; in particular, the influence of the reverberation of the conference room causes deterioration of the sound quality. Studies aiming to improve the quality of the signal transmission have been conducted; however, there are no acoustic countermeasure methods considering the acoustic characteristics of the two rooms connected by a teleconference system and performing the sound quality evaluation. In this study, focusing on a teleconference system sharing video and audio between two separate rooms, we evaluated the improvement in the sound transmission performance due to the addition of sound absorption to the conference room by examining the correspondence between the subjective assessment results and acoustical physical indexes. Additionally, the acoustical physical indexes that allow evaluating the quality of the sound transmitted via the teleconference system were also examined by comparing with the result of a subjective assessment. Intelligibility tests were conducted, listening difficulty ratings were evaluated, and the impulse response, STI, Clarity (C50), and reverberation time were measured in an actual teleconference system. We observed that, before the addition of sound absorption, the sound was difficult to listen to due to the acoustic characteristics of both of the utterance and receiving rooms. However, by suppressing reverberation in both the utterance and receiving rooms by using sound-absorbing panels, the difficulties in listening was improved. By examination of the correspondence between the subjective assessment results and acoustical physical indexes, we proved that STI and Clarity (C50) are highly correlated with intelligibility. On the other hand, reverberation time was found to be uncorrelated with the intelligibility of the rooms of teleconference systems.

Sounds Heard, Meaning Deferred: Music Transcription as Imperial Technology

Sounds Heard, Meaning Deferred:Music Transcription as Imperial Technology Glenda Goodman (bio) "Whensoever they resorted to us, their first request was commonly this, Gnaah, by which they intreated that we should sing," wrote Sir Francis Drake, describing the interaction between the coastal Miwok Indians and his crew in what is now Point Reyes, California, in 1579.1 Music and noise informed, mediated, negotiated, warned, and pleased during the intercultural encounters through which European empires were built. After the fact, the representation of human sounds helped advance the ideological agendas of imperialism. For Drake, a message of Protestant-English supremacy subtexted his account of the Miwok Indians' alleged enjoyment of his crew's singing (as he claimed, their Native hosts were captivated by hearing English psalms). Denigrating and dismissing non-European musical practices was an equally important strategy for asserting European dominance; Drake described a Miwok ritual oration as "tedious," the singing as "a most miserable and doleful manner of shreeking."2 As Europeans' descriptions and transcriptions of the new aural sensations filtered back to Europe, composers transformed the materials into works that exoticized non-Western peoples.3 This essay assesses the soundscape of imperial encounter from a different direction: less concerned with exotic depictions of Others in musical works, I wish to consider how notated music itself was co-opted as evidence that helped map global trade in the eighteenth century. Alongside maps, illustrations of flora and fauna, and portraits of native women and men, early modern European travelogues often contained transcriptions of non-Western music.4 Whether driven by curiosity, fear, or a clinical wish to gain information, jotting down notes was a practice shared by explorers, conquerors, missionaries, and traders. These transcriptions are interpretative documents of [End Page 39] the intercultural encounters that were endemic to early modern imperialism. They are also bewildering documents, difficult to interpret.5 Attending to these sources provides a critical way to address empire, for transcriptions reveal how the technology of music notation helped glean information about non-Western peoples and their musics. At the same time, ambiguities in how transcriptions were made and interpreted expose the tenuousness of imperial authority. The humble transcriptions were hitched to the hubris of imperialism. Nearly all of the eighteenth-century music studied by musicologists such as myself is written in western staff notation, in which the five horizontal lines, dotted with note-heads and divided by bar-lines, prioritizes pitch and duration. Quite understandably, this notation captures the kinds of pitches and durations found in European music; when European travelers tried to transcribe non-Western music—music in which pitch and duration mattered less than other features (such as timbre or gesture)—the notation technology at their disposal was inadequate. Given such limitations, it is interesting that many of these transcriptions were printed in books that were not otherwise about music, books that contained information that was meant to advance the goals of European empires. In these books, music was more akin to maps, descriptions of fortifications and cities, outlines of political power structures, and accounts of local customs for anything from medicine to child-rearing—all of which were meant to help future travelers and enlighten metropolitan readers.6 Most broadly, we can understand the transcriptions to be reifications of European biases rather than documents of indigenous culture, instances of the "Savage slot" by which the West constructs itself.7 But more minutely, the transcriptions shed light on the quotidian difficulties of empire-building. Transcriptions betray a tension between control and unmanageability, revealing how mastery of musical information—that is, the musical sounds non-Western people made and the aesthetic, social, and political messages such sounds carried—eluded empire's grasp. As such, they reflect the habits of Enlightenment-era imperialists for whom comprehensive knowledge was an alluring delusion.8 There was no systematic gathering of information about specific cultures' music. Instead, what was documented and published were spotty examples that were snatched haphazardly. Not only were records incomplete, unable to capture all sonic elements; they were also proxies for experiences that were partly incomprehensible. As is now well-understood, the act of writing translated indigenous expressions into forms familiar to Europeans, yet supplemental meanings...

Hearing objects and events

Through hearing we learn about source events: events in which objects move or interact so that they vibrate and produce sound waves, such as when they roll, collide, or scrape together. It is often claimed that we do not simply hear sounds and infer what event caused them, but hear source events themselves, through hearing sounds. Here I investigate how the idea that we hear source events should be understood, with a focus on how hearing an event relates to hearing the objects involved in that event. I argue that whereas we see events such as rollings and collisions by seeing objects move through space, this cannot be how we hear them, and go on to examine two other possible models. On the first, we hear events but not their participant objects. On the second, to hear an event is to hear the appearance of an object to change. I argue that neither is satisfactory and endorse a third option: to hear a source event is to hear an object as extending through time.

Teaching phonetics to undergraduate students majoring speech and hearing sciences and disorders

Phonetics is a fundamental course to provide students key knowledge and skills for understanding speech and hearing disorders. In our university, the students are required to take two courses. In Phonetics, we present the basic anatomy and physiology of speech production with emphasis on the three elements, flow, vibrations, and movement. Historical studies on speech production and perception, such as phonetic invariance, perceptual restoration, are presented. Based on the experimental findings, students learned the nature of human communication. That is, speech production is highly adaptive, but speech signal is somewhat varied. In some situations, the top-down processing helps listeners understand speech code. In Phonetics LAB, phonetic transcription, sound productions with vocal tract aerodynamics and acoustics are covered. The acoustic theory of speech production is presented, then the speech waveform and spectrogram of vowels and consonants are explained. Students are requested to show the understanding how speech is produced in reference to the vocal tract shaping and aerodynamics. For speech therapists, it is essential to demonstrate an automatic processing of hearing sounds and knowing the vocal tract. Disordered speech should be understood for possible mechanisms because speech therapists need to modify the human body and its control mechanisms.

Evaluation of noise hazard during the holmium laser enucleation of prostate

BackgroundTo evaluate noise hazard during holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP), we designed a study to detect such a risk in this procedure.MethodsThis study was conducted over a 12-month period on 223 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), 121 of whom underwent HoLEP while those remaining underwent transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP). A sound level meter was used to detect the exposure of surgeons to noise. The recordings used were in accordance with the standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Moreover, each of the 43 surgeons participating in a BPH discussion conference answered the questionnaire on the influence of noise, and 33 surgeons in our department volunteered for blood pressure monitoring post-surgically.ResultsThe sound level produced by a high-powered holmium laser emitter during HoLEP was 67.37 ± 0.13 dB, which was significantly higher than the sound heard during TURP (46.41 ± 0.29 dB, P < 0.01). The 65–70 dB noise during HoLEP was proved to be a safe level in accordance with the OSHA standards. However, this level was considerably greater than the stated 55 dB. Moreover, it exceeded the normal communication protective level of 60 dB. In the analysis of responses from the surgeons, the HoLEP group obtained an average score that reflected disturbance caused by the laser emitter and an increase in average systolic pressure relative to that in the TURP group.ConclusionsThe noise level during HoLEP is within hearing conservation levels. However, the noise disturbs intrateam communication and concentration during surgery. Some surgeons may experience discomfort post-surgically, but no significant difference among the groups is indicated. The findings suggest that measures should be taken to address the noise caused by the laser emitter during HoLEP.

Understanding Animal Detection of Precursor Earthquake Sounds.

Simple SummaryScientists and amateur seismologists, particularly in China and Japan, have attempted over hundreds of years to use the behavior of both wild and domestic animals, disturbed by some sensory input well before a major earthquake, as a predictor of that event. The most striking case occurred in 1975, when, in addition to other precursor events, domestic and wild animals in and around the city of Haicheng, China behaved in an extremely anomalous fashion. The city was partially evacuated and many thousands of lives were saved. Re-analysis of these data, however, found it difficult to reconstruct the source, timing and impact of the actual earthquake warnings. Here we provide, for the first time, an explanation of how animals might detect, in advance, the occurrence of an earthquake and why inconsistencies are likely in such a prediction.We use recent research to provide an explanation of how animals might detect earthquakes before they occur. While the intrinsic value of such warnings is immense, we show that the complexity of the process may result in inconsistent responses of animals to the possible precursor signal. Using the results of our research, we describe a logical but complex sequence of geophysical events triggered by precursor earthquake crustal movements that ultimately result in a sound signal detectable by animals. The sound heard by animals occurs only when metal or other surfaces (glass) respond to vibrations produced by electric currents induced by distortions of the earth’s electric fields caused by the crustal movements. A combination of existing measurement systems combined with more careful monitoring of animal response could nevertheless be of value, particularly in remote locations.

Rethinking the Guidonian hand for twenty-first-century musicians

Abstract The immediate recognition and description of the thirteen enharmonic intervals within an octave is a quest upon which students on popular music degree programmes frequently embark, but which they rarely complete. The problem often lies in a disconnect between the sound heard and the sound recognized when the task is undertaken without recourse to an instrument. During the eleventh century, Guido d’Arezzo used the joints on the hand (phalanges) to help music students recognize and sing intervals from hexachords. This article considers rethinking this tool with regard to recent investigations into corporeal intentionality. The approach is developed across three short incremental exercises that are designed for the twenty-first-century musician. It begins by connecting the familiar singing of a major scale whilst pointing to the phalanges of the hand, moving towards inflecting the scale by singing and pointing to non-sequential intervals.

The brain and the body involved in hearing sounds

The brain and the body involved in hearing sounds

Ambient horror: From sonic palimpsests to haptic sonority in the cinema of Kurosawa Kiyoshi

Abstract In ‘Ambient horror: From sonic palimpsests to haptic sonority in the cinema of Kurosawa Kiyoshi’, Steven T. Brown explores how sound flows modulate affective states and noncognitive responses to the ambient horror films of J-horror maestro Kurosawa Kiyoshi. This article considers elements such as the interrelations between noise and silence, the function of ambient drones and sonic palimpsests, and uses advanced spectral and surround field techniques to analyse sound design. Considering these elements, along with the status of the acousmatic voice, we gain a better understanding of how soundscapes contribute to the construction of horror as a space for what Brown calls ‘haptic sonority’. Haptic sonority is a liminal space that blurs the boundaries between the sonic and the tactile, and compels the audience to bear witness to the embodied effects of sound waves vibrating bodies as if they were resonance chambers. In horror cinema, such haptic sonority opens an intensive space where one does not so much hear sounds as one feels them in one’s body in ways that are by turns bone-rattling, gut-wrenching, and hair-raising. It is here that film touches our bodies and invites us to enter into composition with the micropolitics of sound as resonant subjects in a ‘cinema of sensations’.

'Noises in the head': a prospective study to characterize intracranial sounds after cranial surgery.

Patients often report sounds in the head after craniotomy. We aim to characterize the prevalence and nature of these sounds, and identify any patient, pathology, or technical factors related to them. These data may be used to inform patients of this sometimes unpleasant, but harmless effect of cranial surgery. Prospective observational study of patients undergoing cranial surgery with dural opening. Eligible patients completed a questionnaire preoperatively and daily after surgery until discharge. Subjects were followed up at 14days with a telephone consultation. One hundred fifty-one patients with various pathologies were included. Of these, 47 (31%) reported hearing sounds in their head, lasting an average 4-6days (median, 4days, mean, 6days, range, 1-14days). The peak onset was the first postoperative day and the most commonly used descriptors were 'clicking' [20/47 (43%)] and 'fluid moving' in the head [9/47 (19%)]. A significant proportion (42%, 32/77) without a wound drain experienced intracranial sounds compared to those with a drain (20%, 15/74, p < 0.01); there was no difference between suction and gravity drains. Approximately a third of the patients in both groups (post-craniotomy sounds group: 36%, 17/47; group not reporting sounds: 31%, 32/104), had postoperative CT scans for unrelated reasons: 73% (8/11) of those with pneumocephalus experienced intracranial sounds, compared to 24% (9/38) of those without pneumocephalus (p < 0.01). There was no significant association with craniotomy site or size, temporal bone drilling, bone flap replacement, or filling of the surgical cavity with fluid. Sounds in the head after cranial surgery are common, affecting 31% of patients. This is the first study into this subject, and provides valuable information useful for consenting patients. The data suggest pneumocephalus as a plausible explanation with which to reassure patients, rather than relying on anecdotal evidence, as has been the case to date.

Using the ICF's environmental factors framework to develop an item bank measuring built and natural environmental features affecting persons with disabilities.

To develop a measure of natural environment and human-made change features (Chapter 2 of the international classification of functioning, disability, and health) and evaluate the influence of perceived barriers on health-related quality of life. A sample of 570 adults with stroke, spinal cord injury, and traumatic brain injury residing in community settings reported their functioning in home, outdoor, and community settings (mean age=47.0years, SD=16.1). They rated 18 items with a 5-point rating scale to describe the influence of barriers to moving around, seeing objects, hearing sounds, hearing conversations, feeling safe, and regulating temperature and indicated whether any difficulties were due to environmental features. We used Rasch analysis to identify misfitting items and evaluate differential item functioning (DIF) across impairment groups. We computed correlations between barriers and patient-reported outcomes measurement information system (PROMIS) social domain measures and community participation indicators (CPI) measures. The 18 items demonstrated person reliability of .70, discriminating nearly three levels of barriers. All items fit the Rasch model; impairment-related DIF was negligible. Ceiling effects were negligible, but 25% of the respondents were at the floor, indicating that they did not experience barriers that they attributed to the built and natural environment. As anticipated, barriers correlated moderately with PROMIS and CPI variables, suggesting that although this new item bank measures a construct that is related to participation and health-related quality of life, it also captures something unique. Known-groups validity was supported by wheelchair users reporting a higher level of barriers than did ambulatory respondents. Preliminary evidence supports the reliability and validity of this new measure of barriers to the built and natural environment. This measure allows investigators and clinicians to measure perceptions of the natural environment and human-made changes, providing information that can guide interventions to reduce barriers. Moderate relationships between barriers and PROMIS and CPI variables provide support for the measurement and theory of environmental influences on social health and participation.

Access to Nature Improves Well-Being

Access to Nature Improves Well-Being