Adapting to virtual environments: Visual-motor skill acquisition versus perceptual recalibration☆
Section snippets
Problems with virtual environments and the response to users’ complaints
Despite remarkable advances over the last decade, virtual environments (VEs) continue to suffer from numerous defects, including poor lighting, unrealistic graphics, a small visual field of view (FOV), heavy headgear, and various inter-sensory and sensory-motor conflicts (e.g., [1], [2]), all of which produce a diverse array of perceptual, behavioral, and physical complaints (see Table 1). Of the latter, perhaps the most problematic is the motion sickness-like syndrome known as “cybersickness,”
Perceptual calibration versus visual-motor skill acquisition
Clower and Boussaoud [14] have proposed that adaptation to intersensory and sensory-motor rearrangements comes in two qualitatively different flavors known as perceptual recalibration and visual-motor skill acquisition. [Redding and Wallace [15] have made a very similar distinction, although with different terminology]. Perceptual recalibration exists when one sensory system (typically, proprioception) has been calibrated in terms of another sensory system (typically, vision). This is
Comparison between multi-spatial and uni-spatial rearrangements
In a series of studies from our laboratory (Cunningham & Welch, 19), participants controlled a cursor by means of a hand-held stylus applied to a horizontal digitizing tablet, both of which were shielded from sight by an occluding board. Their task was to keep the cursor centered continuously on a small, randomly moving target presented on an upright desktop computer monitor, 57 cm distant. Two stylus-cursor relationships were used: (1) the normal one in which forward-backward hand movements
Summary and conclusions
An understanding of the necessary conditions for perceptual recalibration versus visual-motor skill acquisition allows one to predict the primary type of adaptation a particular VE (or tele-operator device) will produce. If a VE entails a relatively minor inter-sensory or sensory-motor conflict that is limited to one spatial plane (e.g., a lateral misalignment of felt limb position and its visual surrogate viewed in a head-mounted display), the end product of adaptation will be perceptual
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Cited by (6)
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2020, International Journal of Human-Computer InteractionThe effects of visuomotor calibration to the perceived space and body, through embodiment in immersive virtual reality
2015, ACM Transactions on Applied PerceptionSickness in virtual reality
2014, Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety DisordersA lightweight augmented virtuality system for providing a faithful and spatially manipulable visual hand representation
2011, Annual Review of CyberTherapy and TelemedicineLearning arm/hand coordination with an altered visual input
2010, Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience
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This research was supported by a Grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Project UPN 131-20-30-00).