TY - JOUR

T1 - Investigating the redundancy principle in immersive virtual reality environments

T2 - An eye-tracking and EEG study

AU - Baceviciute, Sarune

AU - Lucas, Gordon

AU - Terkildsen, Thomas Schjødt

AU - Makransky, Guido

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - BackgroundThe increased availability of immersive virtual reality (IVR) has led to a surge of immersive technology applications in education. Nevertheless, very little is known about how to effectively design instruction for this new media, so that it would benefit learning and associated cognitive processing.ObjectivesThis experiment explores if and how traditional instructional design principles from 2D media translate to IVR. Specifically, it focuses on studying the underlying mechanisms of the redundancy-principle, which states that presenting the same information concurrently in two different sensory channels can cause cognitive overload and might impede learning.MethodsA total of 73 participants learned through a specifically-designed educational IVR application in three versions: (1) auditory representation format, (2) written representation format, and (3) a redundancy format (i.e. both written and auditory formats). The study utilized advanced psychophysiological methods of Electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking (ET), learning measures and self-report scales.Results and ConclusionsResults show that participants in the redundancy condition performed equally well on retention and transfer post-tests. Similarly, results from the subjective measures, EEG and ET suggest that redundant content was not found to be more cognitively demanding than written content alone.ImplicationsFindings suggest that the redundancy effect might not generalize to VR as originally anticipated in 2D media research, providing direct implications to the design of IVR tools for education.

AB - BackgroundThe increased availability of immersive virtual reality (IVR) has led to a surge of immersive technology applications in education. Nevertheless, very little is known about how to effectively design instruction for this new media, so that it would benefit learning and associated cognitive processing.ObjectivesThis experiment explores if and how traditional instructional design principles from 2D media translate to IVR. Specifically, it focuses on studying the underlying mechanisms of the redundancy-principle, which states that presenting the same information concurrently in two different sensory channels can cause cognitive overload and might impede learning.MethodsA total of 73 participants learned through a specifically-designed educational IVR application in three versions: (1) auditory representation format, (2) written representation format, and (3) a redundancy format (i.e. both written and auditory formats). The study utilized advanced psychophysiological methods of Electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking (ET), learning measures and self-report scales.Results and ConclusionsResults show that participants in the redundancy condition performed equally well on retention and transfer post-tests. Similarly, results from the subjective measures, EEG and ET suggest that redundant content was not found to be more cognitively demanding than written content alone.ImplicationsFindings suggest that the redundancy effect might not generalize to VR as originally anticipated in 2D media research, providing direct implications to the design of IVR tools for education.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - EEG

KW - eye-tracking

KW - immersive virtual reality

KW - learning

KW - redundancy principle

U2 - 10.1111/jcal.12595

DO - 10.1111/jcal.12595

M3 - Journal article

VL - 38

SP - 120

EP - 136

JO - Journal of Computer Assisted Learning

JF - Journal of Computer Assisted Learning

SN - 0266-4909

IS - 1

ER -