The Effect of Increased Immersion and Its Relationship with Presence on Episodic Memory Performance Within Virtual Reality Environments
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THE EFFECT OF INCREASED IMMERSION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESENCE ON EPISODIC MEMORY PERFORMANCE WITHIN VIRTUAL REALITY ENVIRONMENTS S. Adam Smith A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience (Cognitive Psychology). Chapel Hill 2019 Approved by: Neil Mulligan Kelly Giovanello Joe Hopfinger Mark Hollins Jennifer Arnold © 2019 S. Adam Smith ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT S. Adam Smith: The Effect of Increased Immersion and its Relationship with Presence on Episodic Memory Performance within Virtual Reality Environments (Under the direction of Neil Mulligan) Although virtual reality (VR) represents a promising tool for psychological research, much remains unknown about how different properties of VR environments may affect episodic memory performance. Two closely related characteristics of VR are immersion (i.e., the objective degree to which VR naturalistically portrays a facsimile of an analogous real-world environment) and presence (i.e., the subjective sense of being “mentally transported” to the virtual world). While some research has demonstrated a benefit of increased immersion on VR- based learning, it is uncertain how broadly and consistently this benefit might extend to individual components of immersion in isolation. Additionally, it is unclear whether immersion itself is what influences memory performance in these instances, or if presence is a mediating factor which explains the relationship between immersion and memory. To address these issues, the current study assessed how presence and memory were affected by three individual manipulations of immersion: field of view, unimodal (visual only) vs. bimodal (visual and auditory) environments, and the realism of lighting effects (e.g., the occurrence or absence of shadows). Results varied between different manipulations of immersion, suggesting that outcomes of one property of immersion may not be representative of immersion in general. However, no evidence for a mediating effect of presence emerged in any of the individual experiments, nor in a combined inter-experimental analysis. This outcome demonstrates a degree of independence between immersion and presence with regard to their iii influence on episodic memory performance, and further implies that presence may not be a critical factor in memory in VR. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation could not have been completed without the support of various professors, friends, and family along the way. I would first like to extend my gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee: Professors Neil Mulligan, Kelly Giovanello, Joe Hopfinger, Mark Hollins, and Jennifer Arnold. I would like to thank you all for your time, expertise, and thoughtful advice – not only with regard to this project, but throughout my graduate training. You have all helped to make me a better writer, researcher, and instructor, and I am grateful to have received such excellent guidance as a student in the Cognitive program. In particular, I would like to give special thanks to my advisor, Neil Mulligan, for his many years of mentorship throughout both my graduate and undergraduate course of study. I am thankful for his attentive and astute tutelage, and sincerely appreciate his support and belief in me as I delved into this new domain of research. I would also like to thank my research assistant, Maleek Holmes. Without his efforts, data collection would have been a far more arduous and time-consuming process, and I appreciate his willingness to engage with and learn the techniques necessary for conducting virtual reality research. I am appreciative of the technical assistance provided by my good friend, Michael Pritchard. His advice regarding the use of C# scripting in Unity greatly facilitated my first foray v into the domain of programming virtual environments. I am grateful that he devoted this time in order to share his coding expertise for the benefit of the project. I could not have arrived at this point without the love and support of my parents, Carson and Meghann, and my sister, Natalie. I am immeasurably grateful for your constant reassurance and faith in me, and am forever indebted to the sacrifices you have made to ensure I had every opportunity possible to pursue my passions. You have helped to mold me into the man I am today, and I am proud to call you my family. Finally, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to my incredible wife, Lúcia. Your continued patience, kindness, and encouragement have emboldened and strengthened me, and mean more to me than I could ever repay. Thank you for enduring many long nights and busy weekends, and for supporting me at both my best and my worst moments. It is your devotion which has enabled me to complete this undertaking, and you to whom I dedicate this dissertation. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 What counts as “Virtual Reality”? .......................................................................................3 Properties of Virtual Reality Immersion and their impact on Episodic Memory ................................................................................................8 The Relationship between Immersion, Presence, and Episodic Memory ...................................................................................................19 The Current Study ..............................................................................................................25 EXPERIMENT ONE .....................................................................................................................27 Experiment One – Methods ...............................................................................................29 Experiment One – Results .................................................................................................38 Experiment One – Discussion ............................................................................................41 EXPERIMENT TWO ....................................................................................................................44 Experiment Two – Methods...............................................................................................45 Experiment Two – Results .................................................................................................46 Experiment Two – Discussion ...........................................................................................48 EXPERIMENT THREE ................................................................................................................51 Experiment Three – Methods.............................................................................................52 Experiment Three – Results ...............................................................................................53 Experiment Three – Discussion .........................................................................................55 vii EXPLORATORY ANALYSES AND DISCUSSION ..................................................................61 GENERAL DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................73 APPENDIX A -- The Memory Characteristics Questionnaire ......................................................96 APPENDIX B -- The Video Game Experience Questionnaire .....................................................98 APPENDIX C -- Lists of Critical Objects .....................................................................................99 APPENDIX D -- Comparing Correlational Analyses (averaged across immersion vs. separate analyses for High- and Low-Immersion) ...................................101 APPENDIX E -- Exploratory Analyses .......................................................................................102 E.1 – Video Gaming Experience .....................................................................................102 E.2 – Simulator Sickness .................................................................................................103 E.3 – Gender Effects ........................................................................................................104 E.4 – Interexperimental Correlations of Presence and Memory ......................................107 E.5 – Contrast Effects ......................................................................................................108 APPENDIX F – ITC-SOPI Subscale Analyses (by individual experiment) ...............................114 F.1 – Experiment One Supplementary Analyses .............................................................114 F.2 – Experiment Two Supplementary Analyses ............................................................117 F.3 – Experiment Three Supplementary Analyses ..........................................................120 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................123 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 -- Photograph of apparatus in laboratory .........................................................................86 Figure 2 -- Sample image displayed