Flitter H, Pfeiffer T, Rickheit G. Psycholinguistic experiments on spatial relations using stereoscopic presentation. In: Rickheit G, Wachsmuth I, eds. Situated Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter; 2006: 127-153.This contribution presents investigations of the usage of computer gene¬rated 3D stimuli for psycholinguistic experiments. In the first part, we introduce VDesigner. VDesigner is a visual programming environment that operates in two different modes, a design mode to implement the materials and the structure of an experiment, and a runtime mode to actually run the experiment. We have extended VDesigner to support interactive experimentation in 3D. In the second part, we de-scribe a practical application of the programming environment. We have replicated a previous 2½D study of the production of spatial terms in a 3D setting, with the objective of investigating the effect of the presentation modes (2½D vs. 3D) on the choice of the referential system. In each trial, on being presented with a scene, the participants had to verbally specify the position of a target object in relation to a reference object. We recorded the answers of the participants as well as their reac-tion times. The results suggest that stereoscopic 3D presentations are a promising technology to elicit a more natural behavior of participants in computer-based experiments
