Presence Promotes Performance on a Virtual Spatial Cognition Task: Impact of Human Factors on Virtual Reality Assessment

Abstract

The use of virtual reality in spatial cognition evaluation has been growing rapidly, mainly because of its potential applications in the training and diagnosis of cognitive impairment and its ability to blend experimental control and ecological validity. However, there are still many gray areas on virtual reality, notably on the sense of presence and its complex relationship to task performance. Performance in VR is often suggested to be influenced by other human factors including, amongst others, cybersickness, gender, video game experience, and field dependence. Would an individual experiencing more presence systematically show better performance? This study aimed to be part of a framework of virtual reality as this question is fundamental for rigorous assessment and diagnostics, and particularly in the spatial cognition field. Forty-eight healthy young subjects were recruited to take part in a virtual spatial cognition evaluation. Spatial cognition performance, along with their level of presence, cybersickness, video game experience, gender and field dependence, were measured. Matrix correlations were used, along with linear regressions and mediation analysis. Results show that presence promoted performance on the spatial cognition evaluation, while cybersickness symptoms hindered it, notably among women. The presence-performance relationship was not mediated by other human factors. Video game experience significantly predicted both sense of presence and cybersickness, the latter two being negatively correlated. Even if women experienced more negative symptoms than men, gender appears less informative than cybersickness and video game experience. Field dependence was not associated with any other variable. Results are discussed by confronting two theories of cognition (representational vs. ecological), highlighting that virtual reality is not a simple transposition of reality but truly a new paradigm with its own biases favoring some individuals more than others, and that some human factors have to be controlled for rigorous uses of virtual environments, particularly for spatial cognition evaluation.

Field (In)dependence Flexibility Following a Virtual Immersion Is Associated With Cybersickness and Sense of Presence

“…In other words, the more FD an individual initially is, the more likely he or she is to reduce his or her FD after a virtual immersion. Notwithstanding, and in accordance with Maneuvrier et al (2020), there was no association in the present study between FDI pre-immersion and either sense of presence or cybersickness. This seems to corroborate the fact that FDI pre-immersion alone, as assessed by a one-time measure on the RFT, is not a direct and pertinent predictor of the way an individual will experience virtual immersion.…”

“…Indeed, the sense of presence and cybersickness are two negatively correlated psychological constructs which largely determine an individual psychological construction of the virtual environment (Weech et al, 2019). Understanding how and why individuals experience VR differently is crucial because this will affect a wide range of behaviors, from the learning and transfer of specific skills (Piccione et al, 2019;Grassini et al, 2020) to the effectiveness and acceptance of psychological therapies (Gutierrez-Maldonado et al, 2010;Wallach et al, 2011;Rus-Calafell et al, 2013), the immersion analgesic effect (Hoffman et al, 2004), and even the performance on a spatial cognition task (Maneuvrier et al, 2020). However, despite a strong correlation between the sense of presence and cybersickness, Maneuvrier et al (2020) showed association neither between sense of presence and FDI nor between cybersickness and FDI.…”

XRSISE: An XR Training System for Interactive Simulation and Ergonomics Assessment

“…6,15,16,17) were not taken into account. While our study achieves better scores than the results presented in (Maneuvrier et al, 2020) (presence global mean score of 101.95 ± 10.38), the subjectivity in the questionnaires' responses does not allow to deduce a definite outperformance. In addition every experiment design focuses on different targets and each user rates his experience differently, according to his standards.…”

“…The included questions are associated to consequential factors contributing to the sense of presence, such as Control Factors (CF), Sensory Factors (SF), Distraction Factors (DF) and Realism Factors (RF). In order to better assess the results of QoP in respect to familiarization with virtual environments, the users also completed the Video Game Experience questions of (Maneuvrier et al, 2020). CF are related to the degree of control the user has over the task environment and affect their immersion.…”

Evaluating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms in children and adolescents through tracked head movements in a virtual reality classroom: The effect of social cues with different sensory modalities

“…Additionally, the comorbidities included in our inclusion criteria may have influenced the results. Fifth, while previous exposure to video games and VR ( Maneuvrier et al, 2020 ), or self-representation of oneself as an avatar ( Friehs et al, 2022 ) may influence CPT performance within VR environments, we did not control for these factors in our study.…”