Exploring virtual reality to support the experimental psychology lab

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Francisco Quadrado
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/31294
• topic: Virtual reality; Unity; Continuous flash suppression; Threat processing; Experimental psychology

Threat processing is a psychology field that studies how the emotional response to fear stimuli is processed under unawareness. Researchers study this area by presenting to participants threat inducing stimuli in visual unawareness conditions, using visual suppression paradigms in the experimental psychology labs. These paradigms require that two different images are shown to each eye to create the unaware state. One such paradigm is breaking-Continuous Flash Suppression (bCFS). The traditional methods use special equipment to display a different image to each eye. However, these have several unappealing factors, such as expensiveness or effectiveness. Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that has seen its use increase in recent research studies, showing promising results. In this regard, in collaboration with the Department of Education and Psychology, it is proposed to evaluate VR technology as a suitable alternative to current traditional methods through experimental data collection sessions. An application system is developed to perform threat processing experiments implementing the bCFS paradigm that allows the data collection, supporting VR, and the current traditional methods, satisfying a list of requirements created to guide its development. The application developed is capable of performing the experiments required and collecting the resulting data analysis, supporting VR and the traditional methods. The experiment setup is achieved via a configuration file that allows setting various parameters to produce different experiment conditions. The system is capable of displaying stimuli accurately, containing other functionalities such as image calibration, and runtime troubleshooting features. The software application developed allows, in its current state, the experimental data collection to validate Virtual Reality as a suitable technology for the experimental psychology lab.