The Effects of Levels of Immersion on Presence and Memory in Virtual Environments: A Reality Centre Approach

Simulation fidelity is characterized as the extent to which a Virtual Environment (VE) and relevant interactions with it are indistinguishable from a user’s interaction with a real environment. The growing number of VE training applications which target a high level of simulation fidelity, mainly for transfer of training in the real world, have made it crucial to examine the manner in which these particular implementations and designs are evaluated. The methodology presented in this study focuses on real versus simulated virtual worlds, comparing participants’ level of presence, task performance, and cognition state employed to complete a memory task. A 15-minute seminar was presented in four different conditions including real, 3D desktop, 3D Head Mounted Display (HMD) and Audio-only (between-subjects design). Four independent groups of 18 participants took part in the experiment, which investigated the effects of levels of immersion on participants’ memory recall and memory awareness state (relevant to episodic and semantic memory types) as well as on their perception of the experimental space and sense of presence for every condition. The level of reported presence was not positively associated with accurate memory recall in all conditions, although the scores for both presence and seminar memory recall in the “real” condition were statistically higher. Memory awareness states’ analysis gave a invaluable insight into “how” participants remembered both communicated information and space, as opposed to “what,” most interestingly across specific conditions where results for presence and accurate memory recall were not proven to be significant.