Toward a More Valid Assessment of Behavioral Aggression: An Open Source Platform and an Empirically Derived Scoring Method for Using the Competitive Reaction Time Task (CRTT).

While the Competitive Reaction Time Task (CRTT) is the most used behavioral aggression paradigm, it is characterized by methodological heterogeneity and quantification strategies for its' outcome are unstandardized. Therefore, the standards of measuring aggression should be improved. This article contributes on such an improvement by providing: (a) a freely available CRTT online administration program, and (b) a factor-analytically derived scoring method. Based on a combined sample (n = 423), a two-factor model was fit to the 30-trial CRTT version. The first factor included all trial scores subsequent to the first time the participant received aversive feedback (i.e., provoked factor) and the second factor included all trial scores prior to this first aversive feedback (i.e., unprovoked factor). Construct validity was evidenced based on the factors` differential relationship with self-reported aggression and narcissism. Our factor analytic findings empirically support the superiority of one of the existing CRTT scoring methods, that is, separately averaging all preprovocation versus all postprovocation trials. We discuss practical recommendations for CRTT users and outline future empirical avenues. This article aims at stimulating joint efforts to move toward standardization of CRTT implementation and outcome measure analysis.

An Augmented-Reality fNIRS-Based Brain-Computer Interface: A Proof-of-Concept Study.

Augmented reality (AR) enhances the user's environment by projecting virtual objects into the real world in real-time. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are systems that enable users to control external devices with their brain signals. BCIs can exploit AR technology to interact with the physical and virtual world and to explore new ways of displaying feedback. This is important for users to perceive and regulate their brain activity or shape their communication intentions while operating in the physical world. In this study, twelve healthy participants were introduced to and asked to choose between two motor-imagery tasks: mental drawing and interacting with a virtual cube. Participants first performed a functional localizer run, which was used to select a single fNIRS channel for decoding their intentions in eight subsequent choice-encoding runs. In each run participants were asked to select one choice of a six-item list. A rotating AR cube was displayed on a computer screen as the main stimulus, where each face of the cube was presented for 6 s and represented one choice of the six-item list. For five consecutive trials, participants were instructed to perform the motor-imagery task when the face of the cube that represented their choice was facing them (therewith temporally encoding the selected choice). In the end of each run, participants were provided with the decoded choice based on a joint analysis of all five trials. If the decoded choice was incorrect, an active error-correction procedure was applied by the participant. The choice list provided in each run was based on the decoded choice of the previous run. The experimental design allowed participants to navigate twice through a virtual menu that consisted of four levels if all choices were correctly decoded. Here we demonstrate for the first time that by using AR feedback and flexible choice encoding in form of search trees, we can increase the degrees of freedom of a BCI system. We also show that participants can successfully navigate through a nested menu and achieve a mean accuracy of 74% using a single motor-imagery task and a single fNIRS channel.

Physical exploration of a virtual reality environment: Effects on spatiotemporal associative recognition of episodic memory.

Associative memory has been increasingly investigated in immersive virtual reality (VR) environments, but conditions that enable physical exploration remain heavily under-investigated. To address this issue, we designed two museum rooms in VR throughout which participants could physically walk (i.e., high immersive and interactive fidelity). Participants were instructed to memorize all room details, which each contained nine paintings and two stone sculptures. On a subsequent old/new recognition task, we examined to what extent shared associated context (i.e., spatial boundaries, ordinal proximity) and physically travelled distance between paintings facilitated recognition of paintings from the museum rooms. Participants more often correctly recognized a sequentially probed old painting when the directly preceding painting was encoded within the same room or in a proximal position, relative to those encoded across rooms or in a distal position. A novel finding was that sequentially probed paintings from the same room were also recognized better when the physically travelled spatial or temporal distance between the probed paintings was shorter, as compared with longer distances. Taken together, our results in highly immersive VR support the notion that spatiotemporal context facilitates recognition of associated event content.