Virtual Reality Tasks
Virtual Reality (VR) and Extended Reality (XR, which includes altered and mixed reality), think of it as VR but without the fully 3D environment, offer an exciting future for cognitive, counseling, and clinical psychology. As such, I wanted to develop a hub for these tasks with some citations on their use.
VR is offering us an exciting look into a person’s attention, reaction, and spatial memory.
VR was recently used in a Florida Stand Your Ground Trial which
Getting Started with VR
General Advice:
Getting started with VR is overwhelming. But The best thing you can do is research (which is good advice generally). Talk to experienced people and know what you need it for.
Resources:
Here are some links you should read before a purchase.
What I recommend:
I focused on cost and ease of use. After all, what would the point of this be if you needed to be an expert in VR to use it for your main interests? I built these tasks in Python, while Unity and C++ are the standard in VR. Python was just easier and had more resources.
Ethical Considerations:
Virtual Reality gives me a headache and the novelty wore off for me pretty quickly. Coding it was a challenge and soq
VR Executables
3D Search Task:
3D Maze:
3D Driving Stop Task:
3D Music Maze: This mimics the water maze that is used in animal experiments. Where rats are placed in a pool of water and swim around until they find the shallow part of the maze pool. Recreating this in real life is difficult for several reasons, including that it is wholly unethical to force a person to swim around at risk of drowning. This task was developed as an alternative that prioritized ease of use and ethics.
Systematic Desensitization: