SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN GLOBAL SOUTH CONTEXTS: CHILDREN’S ATTENTIONAL PERFORMANCE IN VULNERABLE SCHOOLS WITH DIFFERENT LIGHTING CONDITIONS.

MONTEOLIVA, JUAN MANUEL; ISON, MIRTA SUSANA; SANTILLÁN, JAVIER; PATTINI, ANDREA

Rhodas

Congreso; 26th International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD),; 2022

International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD)

Lighting in learning spaces is one of the most influential physical characteristics inclassrooms. Studies within North America and Western Europe suggest that daylightin schools improves children’s attention, behavior, emotionality and sociability.However, little is known yet about these implications in the global south where theuse of uncontrolled daylight, poor lighting and lack of improvements in lightinstallations are permanent problems in educational vulnerable contexts. Promotingthe implementation of the 7th Sustainable Development Goal about the energy use, thecurrent work aims to study the relation between the physical environmentsexperienced by children and their cognitive development.The main goal was to evaluate attentional performance in a monochrome detectiontask by two classroom cuasi-experimental instances under different lightingconditions: one considering correlated color temperature variables (CCT 6500°K -4000°K) and the other taking into account the horizontal illuminance (Eh 300lx -500lx). A within-subject cuasi-experiment was design for a sample of 34 childrenbetween 8 and 9 years who attended a primary public school in a vulnerable contextof Argentina. CARAS-R Test was administered to assess efficacy, efficiency (FA) andattentional yield (RA) in the two experimental conditions.Results showed that in children’s FA (Z= 2470, p = .013) and RA (Z= 2385, p = 0.16)significant differences in the conditions of CCT were observed, but no differences inEh were found. This indicates that a condition of warm light could favor children’scognitive ability to select and maintain attention in a monochrome detection task. Thisstudy is one of the first to address this topic in a South vulnerable context. As part of alarger ongoing research line, these results are expected to be useful in futureguidelines and intervention programs to promote efficient lighting condition designsin learning spaces as a way to improve the cognitive performance of children.