Intake/Orientation session
Anxiety
BLIND
Interested participants were first asked to come to the Virtual Reality Laboratory at the Technology Research Center (TRC) at UMBC for an Intake/Orientation meeting. During this session, the participants were provided a more thorough description of the study and further explanation of procedures and demands, shown brief introductions and demonstrations of the NF and SH task simulations, physiological recording preparation and procedures, and encouraged to ask questions or express any concerns they might have before consenting to participate. Volunteers who agreed to participate were asked to read and sign an Informed Consent Agreement (approved by the Human Use Committee at ARL and the Institutional Review Board at UMBC, in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations). At this time, the participant was randomly assigned to either the control or experimental group. To avoid potential biases or preconceptions of the participants in a manner that might confound the results of this study, we informed all participants that "The purpose of this study is to investigate how humans learn to control technological systems with their brain signals through short-term neurofeedback training". Thus, participants were blind with respect to the existence of control and experimental groups or the real purpose of the study. We then administered a basic demographics information form and the trait version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI [