The waxing and waning of threats in an unpredictable immersive virtual environment

I was incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Cade McCall and his team on designing an immersive virtual environment – Room101 – to study the waxing and waning of threats in an unpredictable environment.

This was my first (and possibly best) research internship where I learned Python programming.

Thank you, Cade!!! I learned so much from you!

Abstract

Room 101 is an immersive virtual environment designed to study the waxing and waning of threats in an unpredictable environment. Participants encounter a series of threats including startling events (e.g., explosions) as well as more prolonged threats (e.g., spiders, a collapsing floor). Using a head-mounted display, participants wander around the room as these events emerge. Meanwhile we measure their peripheral physiological responses. Afterwards, we play a video recording of the participant’s experience while they provide a continuous rating of their subjective arousal. – sourced from LifeLikeLab

@article{McCall2016,
  title = {Introducing the Wunderkammer as a tool for emotion research: Unconstrained gaze and movement patterns in three emotionally evocative virtual worlds},
  volume = {59},
  ISSN = {0747-5632},
  url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.01.028},
  DOI = {10.1016/j.chb.2016.01.028},
  journal = {Computers in Human Behavior},
  publisher = {Elsevier BV},
  author = {McCall,  Cade and Hildebrandt,  Lea K. and Hartmann,  Ralf and Baczkowski,  Blazej M. and Singer,  Tania},
  year = {2016},
  month = jun,
  pages = {93–107}
}