Survey on motion sickness-like symptoms provoked by viewing a video movie during junior high school class

Abstract

The incident of visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) occurred with a 20-min video movie during class in a local junior high school in Japan in 2003. To investigate possibly contributing factors of VIMS, we collected the incident data in three ways: interviewing school officials, measuring the visual environment on site, and surveying by questionnaires to the students. Analyzing the collected data showed that the students’ severities of the sickness related with their viewing distance to the video image, their concentrations on the video movie, their getting a cold, and their daily playing hours of video games. The results indicated that individual differences are determined not only by one factor, like autonomic nervous activity often focused in the literature, but also by combinations of other personal factors, such as health conditions, watching attitudes, and daily play activities.