This paper examines some of the assumptions that guided early work in environmental psychology and reviews them in light of contemporary perspectives. Many of these assumptions continue to have relevance to later work but some additions and modifications are needed to address developments in thinking and research, over the years. There is a need to go beyond cross-disciplinary research and to engage in interdisciplinary thinking and collaborative research with people of other disciplines; to broaden the attention to ethical concerns; to examine the role of technology in people's lives; and to recognize the holistic nature of person-environment transactions with attention to the diversities created by age, gender, ability/disability level, culture and economics.
environmental assumptions; transactional perspectives; methodological issues; environmental psychology