Over the last few years, virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a new technology that is allowing scientific research to investigate topics from another perspective. This is due to the possibility of creating more realistic scenarios in which all the variables are controlled. Thus, the conclusions taken from such research are more consistent since the environment can be much more controlled than without using VR. This thesis researched and validated a new visual cue in an experiment on auditory selective attention (ASA) experiment in virtual reality. The aim was to see how including a visual cue that participants had to search for affected their ASA, which would be a more realistic situation in a class scenario. In an already validated VR environment, changes were made to fit the purpose of this project. Four avatars were situated in four different directions in a classroom (front, left, back and right). One of the four avatars would clap at every trial, which would indicate the direction from which the auditory stimulus would later come from, and the participant had to search for it. When they did, they had to press a button, and then auditory stimuli coming from the avatar’s direction would play. Another stimulus would play simultaneously from another direction to act as a distractor. Participants had then to indicate a characteristic of the target stimulus. To see how the participants’ strategy worked in this new environment, the time it took to find the cue and the head tracking of the headset were saved during the experiment. The experiment was done with 10 participants. The experiment worked and proved that not all participants had the same strategy when searching for the cue. Participants would look at the cue for the front and sides positions when hearing the auditory stimulus. Whereas for the back cue, participants, when detecting that the avatar on the back was the one clapping, the participants would put themselves in a more comfortable position looking at the front to hear the auditory stimuli. Most participants’ results were in a similar range, but there were different outcomes for two participants. One of them suffered cybersickness, and the other participant looked closer to the frontal position than any other participant.

Melden Sie sich hier an um Einladungen zu den Kolloquium-Vorträgen per E-Mail zu erhalten.
Register here to receive the invitations to colloquium talks via e-mail.

Zoom-Meeting-ID: 950 2684 6728
Passwort: 525116