Virtual reality and the new psychophysics

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

Spatial contrast sensitivity in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

Adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically developing (TD) controls underwent a rigorous psychophysical assessment that measured contrast sensitivity to seven spatial frequencies (0.5-20 cycles/degree). A contrast sensitivity function (CSF) was then fitted for each participant, from which four measures were obtained: visual acuity, peak spatial frequency, peak contrast sensitivity, and contrast sensitivity at a low spatial frequency. There were no group differences on any of the four CSF measures, indicating no differential spatial frequency processing in ASD. Although it has been suggested that detail-oriented visual perception in individuals with ASD may be a result of differential sensitivities to low versus high spatial frequencies, the current study finds no evidence to support this hypothesis

Perception of basic emotion blends from facial expressions of virtual characters:pure, mixed, or complex?

As animated virtual characters in games, movies and other applications become more humanlike, it becomes more and more important to be able to imitate the complicated facial behaviour of a real human. So far, facial expression animation and research have been dominated by the basic emotions view, limited to the six universal expressions: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise. More complex facial expressions can be created by blending these basic emotions, but it is not clear how these blends are perceived. Are they still perceived as basic emotions or combinations of basic emotions, or are they perceived as expressions of more complex emotions? We used a series of online questionnaires to study the perception of all pairwise blends of basic emotions. The blends were produced as a sum of facial muscle activations in the two basic emotions, using a physically-based, animated face model. Our main finding is that several basic emotion blends with an opposite valence are perceived as complex emotions that are neither pure emotions nor their blends. Blends of basic emotions with a similar valence are typically perceived as pure basic emotions (e.g., a blend of anger and disgust is perceived as pure anger). Only one of the blends (joy+surprise) was perceived as a blend of two different basic emotions