TY - JOUR
T1 - The Effects of Auditory, Visual, and Cognitive Distractions on Cybersickness in Virtual Reality
AU - Venkatakrishnan, Rohith
AU - Venkatakrishnan, Roshan
AU - Raveendranath, Balagopal
AU - Sarno, Dawn M.
AU - Robb, Andrew C.
AU - Lin, Wen Chieh
AU - Babu, Sabarish V.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 1995-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2024/8
Y1 - 2024/8
N2 - Cybersickness (CS) is one of the challenges that has hindered the widespread adoption of Virtual Reality (VR). Consequently, researchers continue to explore novel means to mitigate the undesirable effects associated with this affliction, one that may require a combination of remedies as opposed to a solitary stratagem. Inspired by research probing into the use of distractions as a means to control pain, we investigated the efficacy of this countermeasure against CS, studying how the introduction of temporally time-gated distractions affects this malady during a virtual experience featuring active exploration. Downstream of this, we studied how other aspects of the VR experience are affected by this intervention. We discuss the results of a between-subjects study manipulating the presence, sensory modality, and nature of periodic and short-lived (5-12 seconds) distractor stimuli across four experimental conditions: 1) no-distractors (ND); 2) auditory distractors (AD); 3) visual distractors (VD); 4) cognitive distractors (CD). Two of these conditions (VD and AD) formed a yoked control design wherein every matched pair of 'seers' and 'hearers' was periodically exposed to distractors that were identical in terms of content, temporality, duration, and sequence. In the CD condition, each participant had to periodically perform a 2-back working memory task, the duration and temporality of which was matched to distractors presented in each matched pair of the yoked conditions. These three conditions were compared to a baseline control group featuring no distractions. Results indicated that the reported sickness levels were lower in all three distraction groups in comparison to the control group. The intervention also increased the amount of time users were able to endure the VR simulation and avoided causing detriments to spatial memory and virtual travel efficiency. Overall, it appears that it may be possible to make users less consciously aware and bothered by the symptoms of CS, thereby reducing its perceived severity.
AB - Cybersickness (CS) is one of the challenges that has hindered the widespread adoption of Virtual Reality (VR). Consequently, researchers continue to explore novel means to mitigate the undesirable effects associated with this affliction, one that may require a combination of remedies as opposed to a solitary stratagem. Inspired by research probing into the use of distractions as a means to control pain, we investigated the efficacy of this countermeasure against CS, studying how the introduction of temporally time-gated distractions affects this malady during a virtual experience featuring active exploration. Downstream of this, we studied how other aspects of the VR experience are affected by this intervention. We discuss the results of a between-subjects study manipulating the presence, sensory modality, and nature of periodic and short-lived (5-12 seconds) distractor stimuli across four experimental conditions: 1) no-distractors (ND); 2) auditory distractors (AD); 3) visual distractors (VD); 4) cognitive distractors (CD). Two of these conditions (VD and AD) formed a yoked control design wherein every matched pair of 'seers' and 'hearers' was periodically exposed to distractors that were identical in terms of content, temporality, duration, and sequence. In the CD condition, each participant had to periodically perform a 2-back working memory task, the duration and temporality of which was matched to distractors presented in each matched pair of the yoked conditions. These three conditions were compared to a baseline control group featuring no distractions. Results indicated that the reported sickness levels were lower in all three distraction groups in comparison to the control group. The intervention also increased the amount of time users were able to endure the VR simulation and avoided causing detriments to spatial memory and virtual travel efficiency. Overall, it appears that it may be possible to make users less consciously aware and bothered by the symptoms of CS, thereby reducing its perceived severity.
KW - Active exploration
KW - cybersickness
KW - distractions
KW - electrodermal activity
KW - information recall
KW - pain reduction
KW - spatial memory
KW - virtual motion
KW - virtual reality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85164404002&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3293405
DO - 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3293405
M3 - Article
C2 - 37418399
AN - SCOPUS:85164404002
SN - 1077-2626
VL - 30
SP - 5350
EP - 5369
JO - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
IS - 8
ER -