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The effect of reducing distraction on the flow-performance link in virtual experiential learning environment

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Abstract

In virtual experiential learning environment (VELE), distraction can reduce learners’ flow experience, learning performance, and the link between them, which are important aspects for high-quality learning. Based on the weak association model (WAM), we proposed two potential guidelines to deal with distraction and then improve these aspects. Guideline1 is directly decreasing the amount of attractive but task-irrelevant distractors in VELE. Guideline2 is enhancing the congruence between distractors and primary task by guiding attention from task-irrelevant distractors to task-relevant elements. To explore the effect of the guidelines, this paper develops a prototype VR experiential learning system, based on which two experiments were performed. Experiment 1 and experiment 2, respectively, conducted a comparative experiment to test the effect of guideline 1 and guideline 2 on flow, performance, and flow-performance link. Results show that both guidelines helped enhance the learning performance without any damage on flow experience and alleviated the weak flow-performance link. The two guidelines provide easy ways to guide task-relevant attention to optimize VELE.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editor and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The authors thank Prof. Chenglei Yang for the financial support; Prof. Sheng Li and Mrs. Dongli Li for the help in preparing and revising paper. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61802232;61972233); the postdoctoral research foundation of china (2021TQ0178), Young Scholars Program of Shandong University,Weihai (20820211005) and Special Project of Science and Technology Innovation Base of Key Laboratory of Shandong Province for Software Engineering (11480004042015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shandong University, Weihai, China

    Yulong Bian, Juan Liu & Wenxiu Geng

  2. Engineering Research Center of Digital Media Technology, MOE, Jinan, China

    Yulong Bian

  3. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Chao Zhou

  4. The First Affiliated Hospital, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

    Ying Shi

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  1. Yulong Bian
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  2. Chao Zhou
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  3. Juan Liu
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  4. Wenxiu Geng
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  5. Ying Shi
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Contributions

Conceptualization, Yulong Bian and Chao Zhou; methodology, Yulong Bian and Chao Zhou; software, Juan Liu and Wenxiu Geng; validation, Juan Liu and Ying Shi; formal analysis, Yulong Bian and Ying Shi; investigation, Wenxiu Geng; resources, Yulong Bian; data curation, Yulong Bian and Juan Liu; writing-original draft preparation, Yulong Bian and Chao Zhou; writing-review and editing, Yulong Bian; visualization,Juan Liu; supervision, Juan Liu; project administration, Yulong Bian; funding acquisition, Chao Zhou and Yulong Bian. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yulong Bian or Chao Zhou.

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The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Ethics Committee of The Jining First People’s Hospital, China. Written consent was obtained from all participants.

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Bian, Y., Zhou, C., Liu, J. et al. The effect of reducing distraction on the flow-performance link in virtual experiential learning environment. Virtual Reality 26, 1277–1290 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-021-00621-3

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