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The comparability or similarity of consumers' behavior in virtual reality (VR) and in real life (RL) is indispensable to successfully take advantage of VR technology in consumer behavior (CB) research. This study investigated the comparability of participants' behavior in a virtual environment and in RL to validate VR for data acquisition in CB research. Participants (N = 98) were randomly assigned to a RL condition or a VR condition in which the settings were chosen to mimic a RL environment as closely as possible. In both conditions, participants ranked 20 types of commercial breakfast cereal by their perceived healthiness from healthy to unhealthy. We observed that the perceived healthiness of the 20 cereals in the VR and RL conditions were highly correlated (r(s) = 0.91, p < .001, N = 20). The information-seeking behavior was not different between the two conditions, t (96) = - 1.11, p = .27. Furthermore, the attributes employed by the participants to evaluate the healthiness of the cereals did not vary between the two conditions. The presence level of the participants in the virtual environment was also examined. The results illustrate that the participants' behavior in the virtual environment and in the real world were comparable, which provides robust evidence for the validity of VR as a beneficial and promising tool for data acquisition in CB research., Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Project “Digital Lives”

Subjective observations made during routine examination of eye movement functions (orthoptic status) reveal that very slow, smooth-pursuit eye movements in cancer patients are irregular. To objectively measure such movements, a video-based system was built to allow analysis of very slow, smooth-pursuit eye movements (1.8°/s). Analysis involves quantification of drift and jerk-like gaze movements that cause deviations in gaze direction from the predicted trajectory. Gaze deviations observed in cancer patients are compared to those for the normal population. Our results show that deviations are more important in cancer patients than in the normal population. The difference is statistically significant (p<0.05) for deviations ranging between 0.75° and 1.75°. In the future, the system may possibly be used in the diagnosis of cancer

We developed an instrument used for recording the dynamics of accommodation of the eye. With this new technique, a recording speed of up to 95Hz can be achieved. As components used in our system are mechanically fixed, artifacts owing to movable mechanical parts are excluded. Recording samples demonstrate the potential use of this instrument. This instrument also enables assessment of gaze direction simultaneously with accommodation