E ectiveness of virtual embodiment in short term knowledge retention
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2020-01-01
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en
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Abstract
Abstract.
This thesis focuses on the study of embodiment within a relatively new medium, Virtual
Reality (VR), by making use of a spatial navigation task. The experiment carried out
tests the recall of directions, when acted upon within a VR environment, compared to
the same instructions being described through video and audio recordings. This thesis
outlines the potential bene ts and drawbacks of non-immersive, semi-immersive and
immersive VR and serves to observe whether limited immersion can o er bene cial
learning e ects for training tasks within complex industrial environments, which can be
hazardous for on-site teaching. For the experiment, thirty-two participants engaged in
simulations, where the objective consisted in reaching the end-points of a collection of
virtual labyrinths of varying complexities. Results show a general increase in e ciency in
route recall with the usage of VR, with participants making fewer mistakes overall when
following directions while being semi-immersed in the maze environments. Participants
who've had previous experience with general virtual games tend to perform better with
the VR condition. Performance between the Video and VR conditions was overall found
to be non-signi cant (p > 0.05) as well as between video and audio for the number of
mistakes made (p = 0.19) as the video condition showed to have a greater individual
variation in performance than the rest of the conditions. The strongest signi cance
between conditions was observed for the Audio and VR pairing, where p < 0.05 for both
time and mistakes, where for time, p = 0.0012, demonstrating an overall improvement in
knowledge recall with embodiment. This experiment demonstrates the viability of VR
for spatial navigation training tasks.
Keywords: Virtual Reality, Learning, Embodiment
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen