Abstract
The objective of this study is to develop and use a virtual reality game as a tool to assess the effects of realistic stress on the behavioral and physiological responses of participants. The game is based on a popular Steam game called Keep Talking Nobody Explodes, where the players collaborate to defuse a bomb. Varying levels of difficulties in solving a puzzle and time pressures will result in different stress levels that can be measured in terms of errors, response times, and other physiological measurements. The game was developed using 3D programming tools including Blender and a virtual reality development kit (VRTK). To measure response times accurately, we added LSL (Lab Stream Layer) Markers to collect and synchronize physiological signals, behavioral data, and the timing of game events. We recorded Electrocardiogram (ECG) data during gameplay to assess heart rate and heart-rate variability (HRV) that have been shown as reliable indicators of stress. Our empirical results showed that heart rate increased significantly while HRV reduced significantly when the participants under high stress, which are consistent with the prior mainstream stress research. This VR game framework is publicly available in GitHub and allows researchers to measure and synchronize other physiological signals such as electroencephalogram, electromyogram, and pupillometry.
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Acknowledgment
This work was supported in part by grants from US NSF (CBET-1935860, NCS-1734883, IP-1719130, and SMA-1540943) and US Army Research Lab STRONG Program to TPJ. The authors want to thank Robin Xu for helping with the VR game code and Kuanjung Chiang for helping with the data analysis.
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Lee, D.H., Jung, TP. (2021). Physiological Correlates of Time Stress During Game Play. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Ntoa, S. (eds) HCI International 2021 - Posters. HCII 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1419. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78635-9_17
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