Abstract
Virtual Reality (VR) is used for a variety of applications ranging from entertainment to psychological medicine. VR has been demonstrated to influence higher order cognitive functions and cortical plasticity, with implications on phobia and stroke treatment. An integral part for successful VR is a high sense of presence – a feeling of ‘being there’ in the virtual scenario. The underlying cognitive and perceptive functions causing presence in VR scenarios are however not completely known. It is evident that the brain function is influenced by drugs, such as ethanol, potentially confounding cortical plasticity, also in VR. As ethanol is ubiquitous and forms part of daily life, understanding the effects of ethanol on presence and user experience, the attitudes and emotions about using VR applications, is important. This exploratory study aims at contributing towards an understanding of how low-dose ethanol intake influences presence, user experience and their relationship in a validated VR context. It was found that low-level ethanol consumption did influence presence and user experience, but on a minimal level. In contrast, correlations between presence and user experience were strongly influenced by low-dose ethanol. Ethanol consumption may consequently alter cognitive and perceptive functions related to the connections between presence and user experience.
Highlights
It is important to understand the influence of drugs including ethanol on presence in VR, in light of the aforementioned effects
The given results of this study have shown that no significant difference between the ethanol and control group could be detected for any of the factors of the ITC-SOPI, SUS and UEQ questionnaire (Table 5)
The comparison of the ethanol group to the control group revealed that hardly any differences existed regarding the factors of the ITC-SOPI, SUS and the UEQ questionnaires, shown by the respective mean scores and a comparably small standard deviation for all factors, indicating similarity
Summary
It is important to understand the influence of drugs including ethanol on presence in VR, in light of the aforementioned effects. To address the effects of ethanol a five-sided CAVE was used in which the participants took part in a geocaching tour whilst being influenced by ethanol with blood alcohol concentrations lower than 0.4‰. Our hypothesis 1 claiming that ethanol consumption will affect presence and user experience has to be rejected for the low-dose ethanol intake scenario investigated here.
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