An Elegant Experimental Setup for Accurate Presentation of Dichoptic Stimuli

Abstract

We present an end-to-end system for dichoptic stimuli presentation and response capture. The lower bound for the inter-stimulus interval of the proposed system is approximately 17 ms. The efficiency of the proposed system is demonstrated using a match-to-sample (MTS) paradigm for measuring the reaction time of 29 males aged between 18 and 22 years and 29 females aged between 19 and 22 years in matching three unique hues, namely red, blue, and green. Using VR glasses ensures that the perception of the colours determined by the three attributes of hue, brightness, and saturation is precisely controlled across trials and subjects, independent of the ambient lighting. It is observed that males have around 16% shorter reaction time than females (p <0.001). Understanding sex differences in the time taken to match colours helps in a more accurate interpretation of results in studies on sex differences in cognition that use colours. It also helps better understand the disease process of neurological disorders affecting visual perception that manifest differently in males and females. The Android code for the entire system is available as open-source code.