In Class

Reality Check

Students use the University’s Virtual Reality Laboratory to explore the intersection of vision and movement. By Scott Hauser

PARDON ME: Emily Cohen ’07 reacts as a “virtual pedestrian” appears in the display of her headset during an experiment at the Virtual Reality Lab last spring. Brian Sullivan, laboratory technician for the Center for Visual Science, keeps the cords out of Cohen’s way as she tries to walk around the lab. (Photo by Jay Capers, courtesy of Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)

Emily Cohen ’07 was having a difficult time telling top from bottom one day last spring. Or was it left from right?

The confusion was understandable because Cohen’s “reality” had been deliberately designed to throw her off as she sat a small table in the Visual Reality Laboratory in the Computer Studies Building.

Wearing a helmet-like headset that displayed to her eyes a grid surrounding a small, three-dimensional post, Cohen was trying to touch a spot on the perimeter of the grid and, as quickly as she could, touch the post in the center. Something that would take the average person a few milliseconds to accomplish was taking Cohen several seconds, if she succeeded at all.

The problem? In the virtual display that Cohen could see, the horizontal and the vertical axes of the grid were out of whack. As her eyes tried to direct her fingers to the “left,” her hand consistently moved toward the bottom of the grid, away from the post.

“That’s creepy,” Cohen said as her finger—its wandering arc visible on a nearby computer monitor—meandered in a zigzagging path back to the center.

The small experiment in the connection between eyesight and physical movement—and what happens when the environment that they are operating in is altered—is just one of several at the heart of Seeing and Acting in a Virtual World, a research-based course for freshmen and sophomores that takes advantage of the University’s state-of-the-art Virtual Reality Lab.

Taught by Mary Hayhoe, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, the course is part of the College’s Quest program, a set of small classes intended to introduce students to a field of study by exploring research and scholarship firsthand.

In the semester-long course, students spend about half their sessions meeting as a small seminar, in which Hayhoe leads them in discussions based on assigned readings about the human visual system. For the other half of the class, students design, carry out, and report on experiments that test how quickly the body can adjust when the mind is presented with what appears to be an altered environment.

In addition to exploring what happens when the x- and y-axes are switched, students also studied the ability of the eye to perceive objects in motion, and how people react when an object—in this case a “virtual pedestrian”—suddenly appears from around a corner.

As the experiments take place, the lab’s system of powerful computers track the data for later analysis.
Hayhoe says the study of vision is ideal for undergraduates because much of the research in the field has only scratched the surface about how the body is able to interpret visual information so expeditiously. Students don’t need a lot of background to understand many of the concepts.

As she plans the course, Hayhoe tries to think of ways that the lab can be used to help relate the experiments to life.

“They are thinking about their ordinary, everyday behavior, which allows them to become scientifically involved at a level that’s not possible in a lot of other areas,” Hayhoe says.

Cohen, a psychology and political science major, says the class let her explore a topic that she first discovered in an introductory course in fall 2003.

“Where else would you get a chance to do something like this?” Cohen says as she watched classmates try their hands at the altered-axes experiment.

The course also gave her a fuller picture of the scholarly life, she says.

“You get a better sense of what professors do,” Cohen says. “This is their research, which I only hear about in my other classes. It’s cool to be a part of it.”

Tyler Green ’07, an undecided major, says the course demands a different set of intellectual skills from other classes, particularly when it comes to designing the experiments.

“They seem simple, but they are a lot of work,” he says. “But they’re rewarding if you put the work in.”

Hayhoe says one of her goals for the course is to help students get a sense of how faculty study the topics that fascinate them.

“What I like best about the class is that students have the chance to make real discoveries,” says Hayhoe.

There’s a fine line between giving them enough structure so that they know what to do and giving them enough freedom to find something new.”

Many students have the impression that science is a tedious process of testing the results of others, but she hopes to show that much of the appeal of science comes from trying to devise new approaches to unanswered questions.

“It’s really important in life to understand that there isn’t always an expert out there,” she says. “It’s important for them to develop a sense of independence of thought.”