Immersive Settings Research Articles

Assessing the influence of immersive virtual reality on microbiology education: contrasting low and high immersion levels with signalling principle

ABSTRACT Virtual reality is revolutionising science education, particularly in microbiology, by allowing students to explore intricate structures as if they were the size of a bacterium. This study investigates the impact of different levels of immersion and signalling principles on students’ presence, interest, and engagement in VR learning environments. Results indicate that in low-immersive virtual reality (LiVR), the use of the signalling principle (SP) significantly enhances presence, interest, and engagement compared to the non-signalling principle (NSP). However, in High Immersive Virtual Reality (HiVR), there were no significant differences in presence or interest between SP and NSP groups, although HiVR resulted in significantly higher engagement than LiVR. These findings suggest that while signalling principles enhance learner experiences in lower immersive settings, their impact diminishes in higher immersive contexts. This study underscores the importance of considering immersion levels and instructional design principles in creating effective VR learning environments, especially for complex subjects like microbiology. The insights gained highlight the transformative potential of VR in education, providing immersive, interactive, and impactful learning experiences that deepen students’ understanding and engagement.

The "Who," "What," and "Why" of student leadership training.

This article provides a foundational framework for understanding student leadership training. The authors categorize the article into three key areas: the who defines student leadership trainers as educators who intentionally foster leadership development, with a strong focus on identity exploration, leadership knowledge, and experiential learning. The what explores the nature of leadership training, distinguishing it from leadership education, development, and engagement, emphasizing skill cultivation in immersive settings. The why highlights the importance of leadership training, stressing practical skill development, reflection, and real-world application. The article positions leadership training as essential for empowering students to engage with leadership challenges through hands-on, reflective experiences that enhance their competencies. Ultimately, this article serves as an introduction to the special issue on leadership development in training contexts.

Assessing the Effects of Sensory Modality Conditions on Object Retention across Virtual Reality and Projected Surface Display Environments

Haptic feedback reportedly enhances human interaction with 3D data, particularly improving the retention of mental representations of digital objects in immersive settings. However, the effectiveness of visuohaptic integration in promoting object retention across different display environments remains underexplored. Our study extends previous research on the retention effects of haptics from virtual reality to a projected surface display to assess whether earlier findings generalize to 2D environments. Participants performed a delayed match-to-sample task incorporating visual, haptic, and visuohaptic sensory feedback within a projected surface display environment. We compared error rates and response times across these sensory modalities and display environments. Our results reveal that visuohaptic integration significantly enhances object retention on projected surfaces, benefiting task performance across display environments. Our findings suggest that haptics can improve object retention without requiring fully immersive setups, offering insights for the design of interactive systems that assist professionals who rely on precise mental representations of digital objects.

The Evolution From Standardized to Virtual Patients in Medical Education.

Standardized patients (SPs) are widely used in medical education to teach clinical skills and provide assessments. SPs allow students to practice history taking, physical exams, and communication in controlled settings. However, SPs have limitations such as fatigue, performance variability, and the inability to simulate certain conditions, which virtual patients (VPs) can address. VPs can address these limitations and offer consistency, scalability, and adaptability. Although VPs are being implemented in research settings, they have the potential to be powerful medical education tools. Advancements in immersive technologies such as virtual reality, haptic feedback, and artificial intelligence (AI) will allow the creation of hyper-realistic, interactive training environments that mimic the complexity of real patient encounters. Medical students will be able to engage with VPs in fully immersive settings, complete with haptic feedback and AI-driven dialogue, allowing for more lifelike diagnostic and procedural experiences. The wider availability of such technologies through web services has implications for global medical education and assessment.

Technological Immersion and Delegation to Virtual Agents

Interacting with virtual agents in immersive settings is becoming increasingly common thanks to the proliferation of dedicated media devices, such as consumer-grade virtual and augmented reality headsets. These technologies offer many advantages, e.g., in terms of presence and engagement, and can impact user behavior and attitudes toward virtual agents. Recognizing and understanding these effects is essential, especially in critical contexts involving the delegation of high-stake decisions to virtual agents. This article presents two experiments that explore users’ delegatory behavior toward virtual agents experienced via different media devices that vary in their technological immersion, i.e., a device’s technical capacity to deliver immersive experiences. The experiments’ results suggest that technological immersion is not a significant factor in users’ delegation decisions. Thus, for virtual agents designed to carry out critical tasks, developers may focus on other relevant factors, such as agents’ trustworthiness or performance.

Characterizing Physiological Responses to Fear, Frustration, and Insight in Virtual Reality.

Physiological sensing often complements studies of human behavior in virtual reality (VR) to detect users' affective and cognitive states. Some psychological states, such as fear and frustration, can be particularly hard to differentiate from a physiological perspective as they are close in the arousal and valence emotional space. Moreover, it is largely unclear how users' physiological reactions are expressed in response to transient psychological states such as fear, frustration, and insight-especially since these are rich indicators for characterizing users' responses to dynamic systems but are hard to capture in highly interactive settings. We conducted a study ($N=24$) to analyze participants' pulmonary, electrodermal, cardiac, and pupillary responses to moments of fear, frustration, and insight in immersive settings. Participants interacted in five VR environments, throughout which we measured their physiological reactions and analyzed the patterns we observed. We also measured subjective fear and frustration using questionnaires. We found differences between fear and frustration pupillary, respiratory, and electrodermal responses, as well as between the pupillary changes that followed fear in a horror game and those that followed fear in a vertigo experiment. We present the relationships between fear levels, frustration levels, and their physiological responses. To detect these affective events and states, we introduce user-independent binary classification models that achieved an average micro $F_{1}$ score of 71% for detecting fear in a horror game, 75% for fear of vertigo, 76% for frustration, and 75% for insight, showing the promise for detecting these states from passive and objective signals.

Roles of domain-general auditory processing in spoken second-language vocabulary attainment in adulthood

AbstractRecently, scholars have begun to explore the hypothesis that individual differences in domain-general auditory perception, which has been identified as an anchor of L1 acquisition, could explain some variance in postpubertal L2 learners’ segmental and suprasegmental learning in immersive settings. The current study set out to examine the generalizability of the topic to the acquisition of higher-level linguistic production skills—that is the appropriate use of diverse, rich, and abstract vocabulary. The speech of 100 Polish-English bilinguals was elicited using an interview task, submitted to corpus-/rater-based linguistic analyses, and linked to their ability to discriminate sounds based on individual acoustic dimensions (pitch, duration, and amplitude). According to the results, those who attained more advanced L2 lexical proficiency demonstrated not only more relevant experience (extensive immersion and earlier age of arrival), but also more precise auditory perception ability.

Analyzing bicycle level of service using virtual reality and deep learning technologies

Bicycle Level of Service (BLOS) provides an essential tool for evaluating the operations of low-carbon bicycle facilities and prioritizing investment in new bicycle facilities under various constraints. This study aimed at developing a LOS method for assessing bicycle facilities in the metropolitan areas of China. Using this method, we addressed major challenges in obtaining user ratings of bicycle facilities and captured senses of satisfaction of bike users riding on bicycle facilities. Virtual Reality (VR) technique was introduced to obtain data by creating 120 immersive settings or scenarios for participants. A hundred of bicyclists or participants with a wide range of characters were recruited. These participants were asked to express their senses of satisfaction under predefined physical conditions of bike facilities and traffic conditions. Their Satisfaction Rating Scores (SRS) were documented. The statistical relationships between rider’s feelings and bike facilities/traffic conditions were modeled and verified through a symbolic regression (or an effective deep learning) approach. The model is demonstrated to be reliable in predicting SRS of bicyclists with a high correlation coefficient. This study also developed a set of LOS criteria based on the cumulative distribution of satisfaction scores. These LOS criteria are simple to use and effective in assessing operational performance of existing bicycle facilities and providing decision makers with insightful guidance for planning, designing, and operating new active transportation facilities.

Cycling in virtual reality: modelling behaviour in an immersive environment

ABSTRACT Immersive technologies in transport research are gaining popularity, allowing for data collection in a controlled dynamic setting. Nonetheless, their ecological validity is still to be established hence their use in mathematical modelling in a transport setting has been scarce. We aim to fill this gap by conducting a study of cycling behaviour where non-immersive and immersive presentation methods are used in a virtual reality setting. The results confirm our hypothesis that participants behave differently when shown a choice scenario in non-immersive and immersive settings. In particular, cycling in an immersive setting is characterised by a higher degree of engagement. We also captured neural activity during task performance. We focussed on oscillations in the alpha (α) band where we found increased suppression in this signal in response to the immersive condition relative to the non-immersive. These results complement the behavioural findings and indicate that immersive environments may increase levels of task-engagement.

Comparing the ‘phrasicon’ of teenagers in immersive and non-immersive settings

Abstract Foreign language learners’ phraseological proficiency remains problematic, even at advanced levels (e.g., Meunier, 2012; Meunier & Granger, 2008; Siepmann, 2008). While the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) method is believed to facilitate foreign language learning by fostering input, interaction, and output, little attention has been paid to the phraseological competence of CLIL learners. The present study aims to fill this gap as it is framed within an interdisciplinary project on CLIL in Belgium and specifically focuses on the phrasicon, i.e. the phraseological lexicon, of 5th year French-speaking secondary school learners of English in immersive (CLIL) and non-immersive (NON-CLIL) settings. The paper reports on (1) an analysis of the variety/range of the phrasicon and (2) an overview of phraseological accuracy. The analyses are based on a corpus of written productions of 180 learners. The findings of this study indicate higher frequency, range and accuracy in the phrasicon of CLIL learners.

Imagining University/Community Collaborations as Third Spaces to Support Indigenous Language Revitalization

This paper explores the development of language instruction programs in universities to support Indigenous language revitalization. Eleven Indigenous educators shared rich insights through interviews. Their visions called for language learning that is functional, inseparable from land-based learning, and within multigenerational learning environments led by Elders. Building on these visions, the authors imagined a third space—an Indigenous-led, in-between space—to discuss the potentialities for universities and local communities to come together. The discussion offers strategies for a third space where universities support language revitalization in communities through co-programming, community-based courses in functional, immersive settings guided by Elders, and an online site for additional supports.

Redefining bilingualism as a spectrum of experiences that differentially affects brain structure and function

Learning and using an additional language is shown to have an impact on the structure and function of the brain, including in regions involved in cognitive control and the connections between them. However, the available evidence remains variable in terms of the localization, extent, and trajectory of these effects. Variability likely stems from the fact that bilingualism has been routinely operationalized as a categorical variable (bilingual/monolingual), whereas it is a complex and dynamic experience with a number of potentially deterministic factors affecting neural plasticity. Here we present a study investigating the combined effects of experience-based factors (EBFs) in bilingual language use on brain structure and functional connectivity. EBFs include an array of measures of everyday usage of a second language in different types of immersive settings (e.g., amount of use in social settings). Analyses reveal specific adaptations in the brain, both structural and functional, correlated to individual EBFs and their combined effects. Taken together, the data show that the brain adapts to be maximally efficient in the processing and control of two languages, although modulated ultimately by individual language experience.

A holistic self-regulated learning model: A proposal and application in ubiquitous-learning

Technology enhanced learning (TEL) represents an expert and intelligent paradigm in which technological affordances are used to facilitate learners' acquisition of domain knowledge (DK), where Ubiquitous–Learning (u–learning) is a TEL instance that recreates situated and immersive settings. However in such settings, learners are stressed by diverse, heterogeneous, and simultaneous stimuli that challenge their cognitive skills, increase the cognitive load, trigger emotional reactions, and bias conduct. Thus this research proposes a smart Sequencing approach that enables TEL systems to lead students to regulate their learning process. The essence of the proposal is a holistic self–regulated learning (SRL) model that encourage students to develop higher–order thinking through the practice of metacognitive skills, motivational factors, and behavioral affairs to become aware of their own learning endeavors. The approach was applied as part of the sequencing module of a u–Learning system, where students follow its suggested cognitive strategies to assist them during the programming of control equipment. Results show that, although experimental subjects had to deal with higher cognitive load, they are expected to reach higher learning achievements than their control peers. The experience reveals how TEL systems are enabled to foster learners to handle their own apprenticeship processes. As a consequence, the smart sequencing functionality of TEL is cognitively enhanced to facilitate students the simultaneal acquisition DK and development of higher–order thinking.

OpenSpace: Bringing NASA Missions to the Public.

This viewpoint presents OpenSpace, an open-source astrovisualization software project designed to bridge the gap between scientific discoveries and their public dissemination. A wealth of data exists for space missions from NASA and other sources. OpenSpace brings together this data and combines it in a range of immersive settings. Through non-linear storytelling and guided exploration, interactive immersive experiences help the public to engage with advanced space mission data and models, and thus be better informed and educated about NASA missions, the solar system and outer space. We demonstrate this capability by exploring the OSIRIS-Rex mission.

Coherent Multimodal Sensory Information Allows Switching between Gravitoinertial Contexts.

Whether the central nervous system is capable to switch between contexts critically depends on experimental details. Motor control studies regularly adopt robotic devices to perturb the dynamics of a certain task. Other approaches investigate motor control by altering the gravitoinertial context itself as in parabolic flights and human centrifuges. In contrast to conventional robotic experiments, where only the hand is perturbed, these gravitoinertial or immersive settings coherently plunge participants into new environments. However, radically different they are, perfect adaptation of motor responses are commonly reported. In object manipulation tasks, this translates into a good matching of the grasping force or grip force to the destabilizing load force. One possible bias in these protocols is the predictability of the forthcoming dynamics. Here we test whether the successful switching and adaptation processes observed in immersive environments are a consequence of the fact that participants can predict the perturbation schedule. We used a short arm human centrifuge to decouple the effects of space and time on the dynamics of an object manipulation task by adding an unnatural explicit position-dependent force. We created different dynamical contexts by asking 20 participants to move the object at three different paces. These contextual sessions were interleaved such that we could simulate concurrent learning. We assessed adaptation by measuring how grip force was adjusted to this unnatural load force. We found that the motor system can switch between new unusual dynamical contexts, as reported by surprisingly well-adjusted grip forces, and that this capacity is not a mere consequence of the ability to predict the time course of the upcoming dynamics. We posit that a coherent flow of multimodal sensory information born in a homogeneous milieu allows switching between dynamical contexts.

Consumption context in consumer research: methodological perspectives

This review and opinion paper considers methods available to consumer researchers in product-focused investigations who wish to: (i) appraise or account for appropriateness of product use, and (ii) increase aspects of ecological validity and/or mitigate effects linked to the central location test (CLT) setting not being a natural consumption situation. The topics and methods covered are: appropriateness of product use, item-by-use (IBU) method, non-CLT settings (incl. natural eating locations, field tests and home-use-tests (HUT)), contextualised CLT protocols, evoked consumption contexts, immersive settings and virtual reality. The concluding parts of the paper considers ecological validity and encourages a deeper engagement with this construct in the broader context of validity in consumer research.

Coping with the (interactive) environment: The performative potential of interactivity

Abstract This article explores the performative implications of coping with interactive performance environments, and ways in which such environments may be considered to ‘make’ people. Performers often practice for long durations in information-intensive technologized immersive settings, which demand and develop a combination of spread attentiveness, deep awareness and fast response times. This particular combination of embodied, embedded, durational and attentionally rich experience may prime the brain’s neuroplasticity – the capacity to reorganize its structure and function by forming new neural connections. This is discussed in relation to movement practices, body and self-image, and debate about technogenesis – the idea that humans are defined by their coevolution with technologies. The article considers two interactive works, Garry Stewart’s Proximity (2012) made for Australian Dance Theatre (ADT), and Crosstalk (2014), a collaborative work by artist Simon Biggs, choreographer Sue Hawksley and composer Garth Paine.

Requirements of Integrated Design Teams While Evaluating Advanced Energy Retrofit Design Options in Immersive Virtual Environments

One of the significant ways to save energy use in buildings is to implement advanced energy retrofits in existing buildings. Improving energy performance of buildings through advanced energy retrofitting requires a clear understanding of the cost and energy implications of design alternatives from various engineering disciplines when different retrofit options are considered. The communication of retrofit design alternatives and their energy implications is essential in the decision-making process, as it affects the final retrofit selections and hence the energy efficiency of the retrofitted buildings. The objective of the research presented here was to identify a generic list of information requirements that are needed to be shared and collectively analyzed by integrated design teams during advanced energy retrofit design review meetings held in immersive settings. While identifying such requirements, the authors used an immersive environment based iterative requirements elicitation approach. The technology was used as a means to better identify the information requirements of integrated design teams to be analyzed as a group. This paper provides findings on information requirements of integrated design teams when evaluating retrofit options in immersive virtual environments. The information requirements were identified through interactions with sixteen experts in design and energy modeling domain, and validated with another group of participants consisting of six design experts who were experienced in integrated design processes. Industry practitioners can use the findings in deciding on what information to share with integrated design team members during design review meetings that utilize immersive virtual environments.

Virtual Commerce (V-Commerce) in Second Life: The Roles of Physical Presence and Brand-Self Connection

Second Life, in a form of advergaming (a portmanteau of “advertising” and “gaming”), is an innovative venue for marketing communication and brand management in virtual commerce (v-commerce). Virtual shopping malls in 3D environments provide interactive and immersive settings that complement strong offerings of electronic commerce. The ability to offer vivid and engrossing social interactions with spokes-avatars within three-dimensional (3D) environments is the key advantage of interactive marketing in Second Life. This study particularly focused on the “physical presence” dimension of interactive brand marketing in 3D virtual environments and its impact on brand-self connection and consumers’ evaluation of a spokes-avatar’s credibility. In the domain of brand marketing in 3D virtual environments, physical presence refers to the degree to which consumers feel as if virtual products and retail settings were real. Data analyses show that an increased level of physical presence positively influences consumers’ brand-self connection and evaluation of spokes-avatar credibility (expertise and trustworthiness) in 3D virtual environment-based brand marketing.

The Impact of a Character Posture Model on the Communication of Affect in an Immersive Virtual Environment

This paper presents the quantitative and qualitative findings from an experiment designed to evaluate a developing model of affective postures for full-body virtual characters in immersive virtual environments (IVEs). Forty-nine participants were each requested to explore a virtual environment by asking two virtual characters for instructions. The participants used a CAVE-like system to explore the environment. Participant responses and their impression of the virtual characters were evaluated through a wide variety of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Combining a controlled experimental approach with various data-collection methods provided a number of advantages such as providing a reason to the quantitative results. The quantitative results indicate that posture plays an important role in the communication of affect by virtual characters. The qualitative findings indicated that participants attribute a variety of psychological states to the behavioral cues displayed by virtual characters. In addition, participants tended to interpret the social context portrayed by the virtual characters in a holistic manner. This suggests that one aspect of the virtual scene colors the perception of the whole social context portrayed by the virtual characters. We conclude by discussing the importance of designing holistically congruent virtual characters especially in immersive settings.