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Media & Entertainment Laboratory

The Media and Entertainment Psychology Lab  

About

Our team aim to answer questions of human engagement with media, technology, environments, arts and entertainment. The lab maintains a particular focus on the ways in which our understanding of engagement with immersive media, technology and entertainment can be harnessed to bring about positive change in people’s lives. We’re concerned with the science of improving user experience, enjoyment, learning, and mental health; with informing design and industry; with supplementing health services and interventions, supporting vulnerable populations with special needs.

We operate with two main aims:

  1. ​to engage in scientific exploration of the way human cognition and emotion interact in the context of immersive technology and entertainment media.
  2. to embed learning and positive change within immersive or entertainment activities.

Facilities

Much of our work has been capitalising on the ways in which modern media technologies such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (including VIVE, Samsung Gear, PS4VR, Oculus Rift, Leap Motion, 3DHD LCD Displays and Surround sound) systems can facilitate research of rich and sophisticated social and psychological processes, while maintaining the experimental control for precision science.

These experimental facilities are coupled with methods of exploring human experience with cutting edge biofeedback and physiological measures of cognitive performance and emotion (such as EEG and ERP, Heart-rate, Electro dermal responses, temperature, Eyetracking and pupillometry, and ​motion sensors), and psychological testing and behavioural data collection tools (including discrete observation viewing, neuropsychological, personality and intelligence testing, automated linguistic inquiry software and qualitative data collection facilities).

Contact, Collaborate, Opportunities

Seeking Industry Partners for Collaborative Opportunities.
Increasingly the development of science and technology is benefitting from a movement towards interdisciplinary collaboration, where science and industry can shape and guide positive growth. Fostering these relationships allows all groups to access perspectives and expertise that might otherwise be unavailable.
As researchers investigating engagement with immersive media, we are keen to get input from developers working in the industry, as your perspective on the experience can be invaluable in guiding our work. If there are particular questions you would like answered, we have the expertise and facilities necessary to design and conduct studies to provide you with an answer.

Get in touch…
o    To arrange a meeting or tour of our facilities.
o    If you would like to join our lab as a researcher.
o    To discuss research packages for your business.

PI and Lab Director: Dr Brendan Rooney
email: brendan.rooney@ucd.ie

More information

UCD School of Psychology

Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.