The cognitive implications of semi-natural virtual locomotion

Abstract

This study incorporated a dual-task paradigm, in which participants were asked to perform basic locomotion tasks with one of three interfaces while remembering a sequence of either spatial or verbal items. Interfaces varied in similarity to natural body movements. Stopping performance was compromised when concurrently remembering a spatial, but not verbal, sequence. Also users exhibited lower performance on spatial memory tasks while using more unnatural locomotion interfaces. These results confirm that semi-natural locomotion interfaces require spatial working memory resources and thus locomotion interfaces compete with ongoing spatial tasks, as opposed to those requiring verbal resources or general attention resources.

Is the user trained? Assessing performance and cognitive resource demands in the Virtusphere

“…Past research has shown that using unnatural locomotion interfaces is cognitively demanding and hinders completion of concurrent cognitive tasks [17,20] and this detriment has even been shown as compared to real-world movements [13]. This could influence participant behavior, possibly leading to alternate cognitive strategies.…”

“…The cognitive tasks were spatial and verbal memory span tasks similar to those used by Marsh, Putnam, Kelly, Dark, and Oliver [13], customized to each participant's spatial and verbal ability levels (between 4 and 6 items in length, determined independently for spatial and verbal tasks). In each trial, a memory sequence (spatial, verbal, or none) was presented at the beginning in a blue grid room and the items were recited in order at the end of the trial, again in the blue grid room, after one minute of locomotion practice.…”

“…Alternate interfaces have been proposed, but even these are not completely natural and training is often required for effective (and safe) use. Unnatural user interfaces cause users to resort to strategies with additional cognitive demands [13,19]. These strategies may compete for resources with a participant's primary tasks (the real-world phenomena referenced above).…”

Development of a speed protector to optimize user experience in 3D virtual environments

“…Strategies to control speed during virtual locomotion are of great significance regarding cognitive workload. Marsh et al (2012) claimed that an unnatural locomotion is likely to worsen user's task performance and result in high cognitive workload because it requires additional working memory to establish and support a mental model; the authors further proposed to develop a body-based locomotion technique which requires less cognitive resources since such locomotion is based on natural skills which have already been proceduralized, e.g., real walking in the physical environment. Based on these observations, in this work we will introduce the minimum-jerk model which has been used to obtain coordinated and natural human-like motion (Sidobre and Desormeaux, 2019), to improve navigation in a VE.…”

Dynamic full-body interactions in virtual reality

“…A number of studies have shown cognitive benefits of naturalistic locomotion as compared to joystick [58,86,95] in exploration and navigation tasks. The benefits include faster exploration of the environment and improved mental maps of the virtual places visited during the task.…”