Taught courses
Our teaching offer provides students the opportunity to engage with cutting-edge research on topics such as virtual reality, multisensory perception, and the role of social touch in human interaction.
Block Seminar: Virtual reality as an invaluable tool for psychological research on social cognition
In this interactive block seminar, students will directly engage with Virtual Reality technology with two live demonstrations. These first-person experiences will inform our discussions of primary literature in which VR is used as a powerful tool to understand the nature of human social interactions. Students will be expected to read and present research articles (in English). Moreover, they will learn how to critique experimental designs. In doing so, they will therefore learn about both the strengths but importantly the limitations of using this technology. In the final sessions, groups of students will be tasked with designing an experiment using VR in conjunction with one of two novel affective haptic devices to investigate the importance of social touch.
Block Seminar: How we perceive and navigate our multisensory world
In this interactive block seminar, students will participate in three, short multisensory experiments. These first-person experiences will inform discussions of primary literature detailing how we explore our multisensory world. Students will be expected to read and present a research article (in English). Research articles will span the breadth of current knowledge of how we use our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin to make sense of the world around us and to interact with others. Importantly, we will look into how the senses work together and how this information is processed by the brain. In the second half of the seminar, through practical worked examples, students will learn how to critique experimental designs. From this experience they will discover the importance and difficulty around coming up with a good research question and glean insight into the benefits of a a simple design. This will be bolstered by discusison about how to choose the right measures to assess participant performance and responses. In these hypothetical examples, the strengths and weaknesses of different measures will be assessed and students will how these need to be tailored to a research question. In the final sessions, groups of students will be tasked with designing a simple multisensory experiment to tap into how humans learn through their senses.
Lectures
The good, the bad and the ugly: understanding the nuances of when and where we want to be touched by others
Elektronische Medien
When and how to add social touch into digital interaction
Hauptseminar Kommunikationssysteme
Teach & touch: social touch in educational & special needs settings
EUTOPIA Social Inclusion