A Naturalistic Setup for Presenting Real People and Live Actions in Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Studies

In this study, we introduced a novel setup to conduct naturalistic laboratory experiments, where participants pursue and interact with physically and socially present actors. So, we aim to understand the mechanisms of action perception in real world settings. A significant challenge in experimental research is to design a naturalistic experiment without losing control over the stimuli at the timing.

Although there are some tools such as shutter glasses, they do not provide an opportunity to present real and digital stimuli on the same media. Traditionally, visual perception and cognitive neuroscience research study action perception through 2D displays, for example, images or videos. However, actions in the real world are performed by physically present actors, happen here and now, and are actable.

Therefore, with this setup, we aim to conduct studies that have high ecological validity. The unique aspect of our setup is a transparent all actor screen to which the participants watch to live actions of a real actor. While the timing of their presentation is precisely controlled, the screen can become opaque and be used as a 2D display when the actor needs to be invisible.

We believe that our setup will help psychologists, neuroscientists, and social interaction researchers to reveal fundamental and previously inaccessible cognitive and neural mechanisms of action perception. It’ll also help bridge the gap between traditional laboratory experiments, which have a high degree of experimental control, and the studies which conducted in entirely unconstrained and natural settings.