In previous posts, I have mentioned an experiment involving object interaction that I am conducting both as part of my independent research and for my human-computer interaction class, this week was go-time. I finally got the interface and task description ready to go and ran 12 subjects this week.
The task was to take 10 blocks, each with a number 0-9 on them, and place them in order as quickly as possible. I had participants perform the task 3 times in the real world and 6 times in a virtual environment, taking their time to completion on each trial. Running the subjects went very smoothly, after a slight mishap involving a broken battery while running subject 1, and I will look at the results in the coming week, possibly writing this experiment up as a short paper for submission to APGV '12.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Write Up
With the subjects run and data analyzed, it was time to write up the results. This most recent experiment, along with 2 experiments that I presented at the Conference on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization last August, will make up a well-rounded study investigating perception and action in virtual environments which we hope to write up as a journal article and publish in ACM's Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP).
My week, therefore, was spent writing up the method and results of the current experiment, as well as altering my conference paper and drawing some conclusions. The rest of the semester will be mostly devoted mostly to writing and editing the journal and finishing up class projects.
My week, therefore, was spent writing up the method and results of the current experiment, as well as altering my conference paper and drawing some conclusions. The rest of the semester will be mostly devoted mostly to writing and editing the journal and finishing up class projects.
Running Subjects
The week after Spring Break was a marathon of running subjects. We ran 16 subjects in 2 days and had the results the next day.
The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the importance of visual and motor feedback when making judgments about an action. In order to do learn about these types of feedback, we placed our participants into the role of both an actor and an observer. In both roles, the subject was 4 meters behind an avatar in the virtual environment; as an actor this avatar's movements were mapped to the subject's own movements and as an observer the avatar's movements were mapped to those of a helper who was in the lab with me. In the actor role, the subject watched themselves throw a ball which disappeared after release and then upon landing reappeared, along with another ball which was displaced to appear either closer or further from the subject than the actual landing point of the ball. The subject then had to respond with a 'further' or 'closer' response, indicating which ball they believed to be the one that had been thrown. The observer role was very similar, except that the lab assistant threw the ball as opposed to the subjects themselves.
As an actor the participant had both the visual information from watching themselves throw, as well as the motor feedback from performing the action. The observer, on the other hand, had only the visual information from the assistant's body movements.
After looking at the results, we found no significant effect of viewpoint, meaning that our subjects were able to perform the task equally as well without motor information as they were with it. This result leads us to believe that visual information is enough and that any addition information is not enough to improve our perception.
The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the importance of visual and motor feedback when making judgments about an action. In order to do learn about these types of feedback, we placed our participants into the role of both an actor and an observer. In both roles, the subject was 4 meters behind an avatar in the virtual environment; as an actor this avatar's movements were mapped to the subject's own movements and as an observer the avatar's movements were mapped to those of a helper who was in the lab with me. In the actor role, the subject watched themselves throw a ball which disappeared after release and then upon landing reappeared, along with another ball which was displaced to appear either closer or further from the subject than the actual landing point of the ball. The subject then had to respond with a 'further' or 'closer' response, indicating which ball they believed to be the one that had been thrown. The observer role was very similar, except that the lab assistant threw the ball as opposed to the subjects themselves.
As an actor the participant had both the visual information from watching themselves throw, as well as the motor feedback from performing the action. The observer, on the other hand, had only the visual information from the assistant's body movements.
After looking at the results, we found no significant effect of viewpoint, meaning that our subjects were able to perform the task equally as well without motor information as they were with it. This result leads us to believe that visual information is enough and that any addition information is not enough to improve our perception.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Spring Break
This past week was my senior year Spring Break, so logically the first Saturday I woke up, ate breakfast and went to the lab!
With our lab finally back in action I was able to get the script for my final experiment up and running the week before break. I demonstrated it for my adviser, Professor Bodenheimer, on Friday and we decided that it was time to start running subjects. Our Saturday meeting was set up to show Professor Rieser of the Psychology department the final experiment and get his approval.
I will start running subjects tomorrow and hope to have 16 run by the end of Wednesday so I can analyze the data and write up the journal article in the following week and a half. I hope to have the entire project finished by Monday the 26th, just so that it doesn't drag out any longer than it should. After that I will have to deal with reviews of the journal articles and finishing up my senior year.
Don't worry though, Sunday morning I packed up my car and me and my closest 10 friends went to Gatlinberg, Tennessee for the week. We hiked, rafted, ziplined and fished and had a great week, and I even saved my boyfriend from a river.
With our lab finally back in action I was able to get the script for my final experiment up and running the week before break. I demonstrated it for my adviser, Professor Bodenheimer, on Friday and we decided that it was time to start running subjects. Our Saturday meeting was set up to show Professor Rieser of the Psychology department the final experiment and get his approval.
I will start running subjects tomorrow and hope to have 16 run by the end of Wednesday so I can analyze the data and write up the journal article in the following week and a half. I hope to have the entire project finished by Monday the 26th, just so that it doesn't drag out any longer than it should. After that I will have to deal with reviews of the journal articles and finishing up my senior year.
Don't worry though, Sunday morning I packed up my car and me and my closest 10 friends went to Gatlinberg, Tennessee for the week. We hiked, rafted, ziplined and fished and had a great week, and I even saved my boyfriend from a river.
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