Place" as a research concept has a long history in a variety of scholarly disciplines - from philosophy to biology and from sociology to ecology. Yet, it has been understudied in psychological science. Nonetheless, early influential thinkers, such as J. J. Gibson, noted how related factors like the environment must be examined to truly understand an organism (McConnell & Fiore, 2017). But empirical work integrating modern thinking on "place" is lacking. In this talk I describe a new theoretical and empirical line of study that draws from enactive cognition and ecological psychology along with methods from virtual reality research. I describe the study of "place-making”, defined as making use of the affordances of a place, via perception and action. I show how, from this perspective, new ideas can be proposed regarding how places are made and defined, how "presence" is experienced, and how communities are made via participatory place-making. I argue that this approach has far reaching implications for research at multiple levels - from the individual to group to societal levels. The results of preliminary research into place-making on a college campus are reported. I discuss how this theoretical framework can be used to explain how factors such as time spent on campus, and engagement in on-campus activities and organizations, leads to a stronger sense of presence on campus. My goal is provide a new and integrated perspective on place and presence to open a discussion on how interdisciplinary research in this area can proceed.
Daniel McConnell is an Associate Lecturer in Psychology at UCF and is a member of the Technology and Aging Lab within the Human Factors and Cognitive Psychology program. He is an expert in perception/action research, specifically in the domain of the visual and proprioceptive control of reaching and pointing movements. He has further interests in visual and haptic spatial perception, affordances, direct social perception, presence, and human performance in virtual environments. He has published in journals such as Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Perception & Psychophysics, and Human Movement Science, and his textbook, Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations of Psychology, is now in its third edition.