A Virtual Versus an Augmented Reality Cooking Task Based-Tools: A Behavioral and Physiological Study on the Assessment of Executive Functions

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Irene Alice Chicchi Giglioli¹  Mariano Alcañiz Raya¹ 

[1] Instituto de Investigación e Innovación en Bioingeniería (I3B), Universitat Politècnica de València

关键词: executive functions;    ecological validity;    virtual reality;    augmented reality;    behavioral performance;    physiological signals;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02529

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two novel graphics immersive techniques (GIT) that, in the last decade, have been attracting the attention of many researchers, especially in psychological research. VR can provide 3D real-life synthetic environments in which controllers allow human interaction. AR overlays synthetic elements to the real world and the human gaze to target allow hand gesture to act with synthetic elements. Both techniques are providing more ecologically environments than traditional methods, and most of the previous researches, on one side, have more focused on the use of VR for treatment and assessment showing positive effectiveness results. On the other, AR has been proving for the treatment of specific disorders but there are no studies that investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of AR in the neuropsychological assessment. Starting from these premises, the present study aimed to compare the performance and sense of presence using both techniques during an ecological task, such as cooking. The study included 50 cognitively healthy subjects. The cooking task consisted of four levels that increased in difficulty. As the level increased, additional activities appeared. The order of presentation of each exposure condition (AR and VR) was counterbalanced for each participant. The VR-cooking task has been performed through “HTC/VIVE” and AR through “Microsoft HoloLens.” Furthermore, the study recorded and compared the psychophysiological changes [heart rate and skin conductance response (SCR)] during the cooking task in both conditions. To measure the sense of presence occurring during the two exposure conditions, subjects completed the Slater-Usoh-Steed Questionnaire (SUSQ) and the ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) immediately after each condition. The behavioral results showed that times are always lower in VR than in AR, increasing constantly in accordance with the difficulty of the tasks. Regarding physiological responses, the findings showed that AR condition produced more individual excitement and activation than VR. Finally, VR was able to produce higher levels of sense of presence than AR condition. The overall results support that VR currently represents the GIT with greater usability and feasibility compared to AR, probably due to the differences in the human–computer interaction between the two techniques.

【 授权许可】

CC BY