Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two novel graphics immersive techniques (GIT) that, in the last decade, have been attracting the attention of many researchers, especially in psychological research. VR can provide 3D real-life synthetic environments in which controllers allow human interaction. AR overlays synthetic elements to the real world and the human gaze to target allow hand gesture to act with synthetic elements. Both techniques are providing more ecologically environments than traditional methods, and most of the previous researches, on one side, have more focused on the use of VR for treatment and assessment showing positive effectiveness results. On the other, AR has been proving for the treatment of specific disorders but there are no studies that investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of AR in the neuropsychological assessment. Starting from these premises, the present study aimed to compare the performance and sense of presence using both techniques during an ecological task, such as cooking. The study included 50 cognitively healthy subjects. The cooking task consisted of four levels that increased in difficulty. As the level increased, additional activities appeared. The order of presentation of each exposure condition (AR and VR) was counterbalanced for each participant. The VR-cooking task has been performed through “HTC/VIVE” and AR through “Microsoft HoloLens.” Furthermore, the study recorded and compared the psychophysiological changes [heart rate and skin conductance response (SCR)] during the cooking task in both conditions. To measure the sense of presence occurring during the two exposure conditions, subjects completed the Slater-Usoh-Steed Questionnaire (SUSQ) and the ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) immediately after each condition. The behavioral results showed that times are always lower in VR than in AR, increasing constantly in accordance with the difficulty of the tasks. Regarding physiological responses, the findings showed that AR condition produced more individual excitement and activation than VR. Finally, VR was able to produce higher levels of sense of presence than AR condition. The overall results support that VR currently represents the GIT with greater usability and feasibility compared to AR, probably due to the differences in the human–computer interaction between the two techniques.
Highlights
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two novel graphics immersive techniques (GIT) that, in the last decade, have been attracting the attention of many researchers, especially in the fields of psychology and education (Chicchi Giglioli et al, 2015; Negut et al, 2016; Fleming et al, 2017; Cipresso et al, 2018; Jensen and Konradsen, 2018; Ventura et al, 2018; Germine et al, 2019)
VR provides a wide field of view (FOV – the area angular size allowed to a user to see a scene) around 100◦ and the human–computer interaction can be ensured by various devices, such as headmounted display (HMD) for the visual stimuli, headphone for the acoustic stimuli, controllers for hand interaction
SDNN values indicate that participants are not in danger of suffering from any cardiac episode since the data is greater than 100 ms, while the rMSSD are in the normal range (Macías, 2016) (Table 4)
Summary
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two novel graphics immersive techniques (GIT) that, in the last decade, have been attracting the attention of many researchers, especially in the fields of psychology and education (Chicchi Giglioli et al, 2015; Negut et al, 2016; Fleming et al, 2017; Cipresso et al, 2018; Jensen and Konradsen, 2018; Ventura et al, 2018; Germine et al, 2019). VR provides a wide field of view (FOV – the area angular size allowed to a user to see a scene) around 100◦ and the human–computer interaction can be ensured by various devices, such as headmounted display (HMD) for the visual stimuli, headphone for the acoustic stimuli, controllers for hand interaction These allow users to navigate and interact with the virtual environment, being felt them totally immersed in the virtual world. Comparison studies on different hand controllers showed that the more familiar, and less natural type of controller provided a best performance, the participants appreciated the more natural interaction (McMahan et al, 2010) All these features are able to generate immersed and the psychological state to be present in the virtual and augmented environments (Slater, 2009). A valid and reliable measure for the sense of presence is the ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory (ITCSOPI; Lessiter et al, 2001) that assess four dimensions: sense of physical space, engagement (E), ecological validity (EV), and negative effects (NE). Tang et al (2004), compared the sense of presence between a VR and an AR environment, showing significantly higher score for sense of physical space for AR, and no significant differences in the other three dimensions, all means were higher in the AR than VR condition
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