Building a Virtual Environment as Stimuli for a Psychological Study

Abstract

This project examines the technical and theoretical development of a virtual reality environment for a study of human-avatar embodiment. Student researchers developed many new skills through this project. Specifically, our team used the platform Unity to create the experimental stimuli, and the programming language C# within Unity to develop the environment. The study involves a virtual reality environment wherein virtual agents ("MECHs") host participants as they volunteer for a simulated disaster relief task. Further, we used the digital painting software Krita to assign differentiating colors and patterns to the agent's virtual 'bodies.' These design differences are then assigned to participants themselves to further their identification with the virtual hosts during the simulation. Likewise, we designed the agents to speak to the participants throughout the experiment to reiterate such stimuli and other attitudes we programmed them to express. Text-to-speech software was used to generate these audio files and we finalized them with 'Audacity' to splice them into manageable chunks. Once the files were properly formatted, they were implemented into the virtual environment. Overall, our development team utilized software such as Unity, Krita, and Audacity to perfect the virtual experience for participants. Through this process, we learned many valuable development skills to enhance our research abilities and facilitate this study of human-agent interaction.

Voiceover