VR-based Exploration of Participant Movement in Experimental Psychology

Abstract

Psychology is the science of behaviour, but the impact of an experimental manipulation is typically only evaluated on aggregated measures of movement. Virtual Reality (VR) can provide an environment that fosters insight, interaction and a more detailed view on movement data captured during VR-based psychological behaviour experiments through different interaction paradigms and good spatial understanding. In this work, we present a case study on the exploration of such data, with the goal of examining user behaviour as a result of different stimuli the participants are exposed to. We adapt an existing immersive analysis system to give insight into captured movement and physiological data, and facilitate the separation of movement behaviour into sections of interest through fitting visualisation metaphors. We evaluate the approach on data captured in an independent psychological evaluation, and report on exemplary observations. Finally, we give an outlook on what is necessary for a more comprehensive analysis system in the future.