No cardiac phase bias for threat perception under naturalistic conditions in immersive virtual reality

Our aim is to investigate visual processing across the cardiac cycle using immersive VR to see whether the cardiac modulations of perception (e.g., Garfinkel et al., 2014) can also be found in more naturalistic settings. As a perceptual outcome variable, the distance of the visual stimuli with respect to oneself will be analysed, as (more) threatening stimuli are perceived as physically closer than non-threatening (i.e., disgusting or neutral) ones (Cole, Balcetis, & Dunning, 2013). We aim to test whether the effect that threatening stimuli are perceived to be closer than neutral ones is modulated by the cardiac phase during which the stimuli are presented.

本研究的宗旨在于借助沉浸式虚拟现实技术，探究心血管周期中的视觉处理机制，以考察感知的生理性调节（例如，Garfinkel 等人，2014 年的研究）是否亦能在更为自然的环境中得以体现。作为感知结果变量，我们将分析视觉刺激与个体之间的距离，因为相较于非威胁性（如令人厌恶或中性）的刺激，威胁性刺激（如 Cole、Balcetis 和 Dunning，2013 年所指出）往往被感知为更接近自身。本研究旨在验证，当刺激呈现于特定的心血管阶段时，威胁性刺激相对于中性刺激所感知的距离效应是否受到调节。