Natural Semantic Networks Of Furniture

Natural Semantic Networks of Furniture
Velasco Eduardo, Mercado Serafín.

Key Words: Semantic Networks, Housing, Furniture.

Abstract
The mental representation of furniture is an important research problem for environmental psychology. As Barker pointed out, its importance relays on furniture’s function as a bridge form of determinant of the physical characteristics of the space andpeople’s behaviour.

As a form of starting to understand this relationship we measured the meaning of furniture in a group of participants from Mexico City and tried to look to the collective representation they have of them, in terms of semantic networks. We looked for the affordances that they provide, marked by verbs, as parts of the definition of the different pieces of furniture.

The stimuliused was selected looking for the most commonly used pieces of furniture using 2 focus groups one made with housewives and the other one of students. Then we used the Natural Semantic Networks procedure by Figueroa et al., which provide similar results to Moscovici’s Social Representations. They were developed from the models that information processing theories developed with the main differencethat Figueroa’s approach measure the meaning from a group instead from a single person

We have founded that definitions of the main pieces of furniture used at Mexico City contain some affordances but they are not the most important parts of their definition and they seem always to be linked to the main physical characteristics of this pieces.

Introduction
One of the variables in homeanalysis is furniture and it is considered to be a set of objects that serve to facilitate the uses and habitual activities in houses, offices and another type of places; that allow satisfying human common activities like sleeping, eating, cooking, etc. excluding utensils and machines such as PCs, telephones, domestic appliances, or small objects. The furniture is conceived as the component of housing,capable of granting a style and the personality.

At the beginning, furniture was made as a functional and utilitarian object, to satisfy needs; something where to sleep, something where to sit down and eventually a little where to store things. As the time passed, people began to wish objects not only utilitarian, but besides the fact that they were decorated attractively. Between the materialsthat are used to make furniture they are: the wood, the synthetic coverings, the iron-works, the half-finished ones, the tapestry, those of steel, those of wrought iron, those with sheets, of metals, of crystal, of natural materials, of plastic and resins, among others.

Furniture has physical characteristics like the properties of the materials, form, scale, immobility and the stability(Norman, 1988; in Nicolavska and Ackerman, 2006). But its real importance to environmental psychology arises on its properties as a part of the behavior setting like Barker pointed out (1968); these characteristics are functional and symbolic, like the establishments and perceptions inside the cultural conventions. It can be said that the particular arrangement of the furniture in a specific room candefine the activities that take place on it.

Historically furniture has been modified in structure and function, though some of them have preserved its original application. As this happens, the interaction of the furniture with the individual and his environment has changed widely, in some cases the furniture can manage to be multidisciplinary or obsolete in some moment. Being glimpsed this way,the evolution of the furniture comes from our needs, activities and ways of life.

The fact that the equipment of due to the requirements of the setting creates a relation that Barker (1968) named sinomorfia. This refers to the existing equipments corresponding to what makes possible or, at least, facilitates the activity that develops in this type of scene (Mercado and cols., 2007)....