The Promises and Pitfalls of Virtual Reality

Subjective Affective Responses to Natural Scenes Require Understanding, Not Spatial Frequency Bands

“…These studies indicated that, while some components of the emotional response (e.g., modulation of electrodermal activity) are highly sensitive to the imminence of an object, other components are less modulated by picture imminence and are almost or exclusively sensitive to the content of a picture [ 21 , 56 , 60 ]. As the context in which events happen may be relevant for some components of the emotional response, future studies might manipulate picture context through perceptual manipulations as in the present study (e.g., using a perceptual manipulation as a proxy for a real-life property, i.e., spatial frequency for distance), through other contextual properties (e.g., history of the most recently viewed pictures, e.g., [ 62 , 63 , 64 ]), or through artificially created scenarios, i.e., in virtual-reality simulations, in which emotional responses might be elicited and measured [ 65 , 66 ]. Provided that emotional events are correctly detected and identified [ 14 , 18 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 27 ], it is possible that sensitivity to contextual manipulations varies between components of the emotional response (e.g., autonomic sympathetic activation vs. central activity).…”