摘要
Artifice--the manipulation of social and environmental stimuli--is fundamental to research in ani-mal behavior. State-of-the-art techniques have been developed to generate and present complexvisual stimuli. These techniques have unique strengths and limitations. However, many of theissues with synthetic animation and virtual reality are common to playback experiments in general,including those using unmanipulated video or auditory stimuli. Playback experiments, in turn, fallinto the broader category of experiments that artificially manipulate the array of stimuli experi-enced by a subject. We argue that the challenges of designing and interpreting experiments usingvirtual reality or synthetic animations are largely comparable to those of studies using oldertechnologies or addressing other modalities, and that technology alone is unlikely to solve thesechallenges. We suggest that appropriate experimental designs are the key to validating behavioralresponses to artificial stimuli and to interpreting all studies using artifice, including those that pre-sent complex visual displays.
