ABSTRACT Research on human functioning is notoriously difficult. This particularly holds for the study of light effects, at least if one wants to go beyond establishing that changes in light “have an effect” and understand why this effect occurs—in other words, if one wants to make causal inferences about the mechanism behind it. The latter is, of course, crucial for generalizing insights and being able to use them effectively in other contexts. The culmination of many decades of research has taught us that light affects psychological functioning in numerous ways and through various pathways. This implies that, regardless of the investigator’s particular interests in either of those mechanisms, generally all will be at play, simultaneously, for participants in any lighting study. The present tutorial aims to address this complexity and how to deal with it by concisely describing the most important pathways that we currently are aware of. Such awareness is important both in contemplating the design and methodology of a study and in interpreting results from other studies and generalizing them to a particular application or light design.

中文翻译：

---

教程：规划照明人为因素研究时的理论考虑

摘要 人类功能的研究是出了名的困难。这尤其适用于光效应的研究，至少如果人们想超越确定光的变化“有影响”并理解为什么会发生这种影响——换句话说，如果人们想对背后的机制进行因果推断它。当然，后者对于概括见解并能够在其他情况下有效地使用它们至关重要。数十年研究的高潮告诉我们，光以多种方式和多种途径影响心理功能。这意味着，无论研究人员对这两种机制中的任何一种有什么特别的兴趣，对于任何照明研究的参与者来说，通常所有机制都会同时发挥作用。本教程旨在通过简明地描述我们目前知道的最重要的途径来解决这种复杂性以及如何处理它。这种意识在考虑研究的设计和方法论以及解释其他研究的结果并将其推广到特定应用或照明设计时都很重要。