Virtual reality and the new psychophysics

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) promises methodological rigour with the extra benefit of allowing us to study the context-dependent behaviour of individuals in their natural environment. Pan and Hamilton (2018, Br. J. Psychol.) provide a useful overview of methodological recommendations for using VR. Here, we highlight some other aspects of the use of VR. Our first argument is that VR can be useful by virtue of its differences from the normal perceptual environment. That is, by virtue of its relative non-realism and poverty of its perceptual elements, it can actually offer increased clarity with respect to the features of interest for the researcher. Our second argument is that VR exerts its measurable influence more by eliciting an acceptance of the virtual world (i.e., 'suspension of disbelief') rather than by eliciting a true belief of the realism of the VR environment. We conclude by providing a novel suggestion for combining neuroimaging methods with embodied VR that relies on the suspension of disbelief.

Virtual Faces Evoke Only a Weak Uncanny Valley Effect: An Empirical Investigation With Controlled Virtual Face Images

“…Highly schematic faces could also be advantageous in some research settings to isolate the features of interest for the researcher (cf. de Gelder, Kätsyri, & de Borst, 2018).…”

Understanding dual realities and more in VR

“…The question of what level of realism is appropriate for a particular research project is one that must still be tested empirically (Kulik, 2018) and defining these parameters is in itself an interesting research question which can be subject to psychophysical approaches (de Gelder et al ., 2018). In particular, it may be interesting to consider the role of both top‐down expectations (based on prior knowledge) and bottom‐up visual inputs in building our experience of a VR scenario.…”

“…Second, several commentaries raise the issue of the technical challenges involved in creating psychological experiments in virtual reality, in terms of realism (de la Rosa & Breidt, 2018;Kulik, 2018) and multimodal signal integration (Aglioti & Monti, 2018;de Gelder, Katsyri, & de Borst, 2018). The question of what level of realism is appropriate for a particular research project is one that must still be tested empirically (Kulik, 2018) and defining these parameters is in itself an interesting research question which can be subject to psychophysical approaches (de Gelder et al, 2018). In particular, it may be interesting to consider the role of both top-down expectations (based on prior knowledge) and bottom-up visual inputs in building our experience of a VR scenario.…”

“…This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. predictive models of perception (Clark, 2013), it might be possible to exploit top-down predictions so the VR system has less work to do (de Gelder et al, 2018). However, if a VR interface provides a misleading input (for instance, wooden facial expressions or odd movements), then the visual input will conflict with prior knowledge about how the face ought to move, and lead to a prediction error which could be linked to the feeling of uncanniness (Saygin, Chaminade, Ishiguro, Driver, & Frith, 2012).…”

“…To what extent are these different modes of experience similar or different, and to what extent can we generalize between them? de Gelder et al (2018) introduces the useful concept of dual reality, that is, the person experiencing a VR scenario, just like the audience in a cinema, experiences a range of stimuli which can induce rich characters and emotionally engaging stories which can suck their audience in to a different world (Kulik, 2018), even one of impossible situations (de la Rosa & Breidt, 2018). Despite this richness, the user knows that this experience is not 'real'; it is a secondary reality which can be discarded at will.…”