Memory for a virtual reality experience in children and adults according to image quality, emotion, and sense of presence

Emotion and motion: superior memory for emotional but not for moving stimuli

Two effects on memory have been described in the literature: the emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) (i.e., an emotional stimulus is better remembered than a neutral stimulus) and the dynamic superiority effect (DSE) (i.e., a moving visual stimulus is better remembered than a static stimulus). However, the DSE has previously only been studied using complex visual stimuli (e.g., video clips). Thus, the first objective of the present study was to examine whether the DSE will be observed with simple visual stimuli (i.e., isolated moving stimuli). The second objective was to examine whether people's emotional memory will be affected by stimulus motion. We conducted three experiments, two using a free recall task, Experiment 1A (online) and 1B (in-person), and one using a recognition task (in-person). Participants viewed negative, positive, and neutral stimuli in two motion conditions, dynamic and static, and then had to recall or recognize them. In all three experiments, we observed an EEM but no DSE. Thus, our data verify that emotions affect memory performance but provide no evidence of motion effects on memory of simple stimuli.

VR Cognitive-based Intervention for Enhancing Cognitive Functions and Well-being in Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment: Behavioral and EEG Evidence

Objective: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been recognized as a window of opportunity for therapeutic and preventive measures to slow cognitive decline. The current study investigated the efficacy of the virtual reality (VR) cognitive-based intervention on verbal and visuospatial short-term memory (STM), executive functions (EFs), and wellbeing among older adults with and without MCI. Method: The immersive VR cognitive-based intervention comprised eight 60-minute sessions, held twice a week over a span of 30 days. The participants consisted of 31 non-MCI older adults in the experimental group (mean age ± SD = 66.31 ± 3.12 years), 29 older adults with MCI in the experimental group (mean age ± SD = 68.19 ± 5.03 years), and 30 non-MCI older adults in the control group (mean age ± SD = 64.97 ± 3.35 years). The dependent variables were assessed by using a battery of computerized test, the well-being of older people questionnaire and resting-state EEG. A repeated-measures ANCOVA was employed to examine the effects of the developed VR intervention. Results: Significant improvements were observed in both STMs and EFs following the intervention, as indicated by behavioral and EEG findings, ranging from small to large effect sizes (i.e., = .05-.17). However, enhanced wellbeing was specifically observed among older adults with MCI in the experimental group, F(2, 87) = 6.78, p .01, = .11. Conclusions: The present findings lend support to the efficacy of VR cognitive-based interventions across clinical and non-clinical populations. These results underscore the immediate impact of the intervention across multimodal assessments, including neurophysiological changes, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes.

Towards an ecologically valid naturalistic cognitive neuroscience of memory and event cognition

The landscape of human memory and event cognition research has witnessed a transformative journey toward the use of naturalistic contexts and tasks. In this review, we track this progression from abrupt, artificial stimuli used in extensively controlled laboratory experiments to more naturalistic tasks and stimuli that present a more faithful representation of the real world. We argue that in order to improve ecological validity, naturalistic study designs must consider the complexity of the cognitive phenomenon being studied. Then, we review the current state of "naturalistic" event segmentation studies and critically assess frequently employed movie stimuli. We evaluate recently developed tools like lifelogging and other extended reality technologies to help address the challenges we identified with existing naturalistic approaches. We conclude by offering some guidelines that can be used to design ecologically valid cognitive neuroscience studies of memory and event cognition.

Cyborg Children: A Systematic Literature Review on the Experience of Children Using Extended Reality

This literature review presents a comprehensive and systematic account of research on the experiences of children with extended reality (XR), including VR, AR, and other types of immersive technologies that enhance and augment children's activities. The search on Scopus and Web of Science produced 531 outputs. Content analysis with inter-rater reliability (Krippendorff's α) and Leximancer, a software for text mining, were used for analyzing the material. Four research strands were identified: (1) interventions, treatments, and medical procedures in clinical contexts; (2) teaching and learning enhanced by XR; (3) children's adoption and user experiences; (4) design and prototyping of XR hardware and software for children. The results showed the following findings: (a) studies on children's clinical interventions and treatments using HMD-supported immersive virtual reality comprise the most substantial strand of studies; (b) research in this area, and in teaching and learning studies, has grown dramatically since 2017, while the other areas have been stagnant over the years; (c) AR research is still limited and is mainly applied in educational contexts for design and prototyping; (d) few studies have considered children's perspectives on XR safety issues; (e) research on the use of XR for enhancing social and emotional skills development is underrepresented. Future research should focus on the potential of XR technologies for interventions to enhance children's psychosocial wellbeing and health more broadly. The further implications and study limitations for the fast-developing nature of this transdisciplinary research field are also discussed.

The convergence of naturalistic paradigms and cognitive neuroscience methods to investigate memory and its development

Studies that involve lab-based stimuli (e.g., words, pictures) are fundamental in the memory literature. At the same time, there is growing acknowledgment that memory processes assessed in the lab may not be analogous to how memory operates in the real world. Naturalistic paradigms can bridge this gap and over the decades a growing proportion of memory research has involved more naturalistic events. However, there is significant variation in the types of naturalistic studies used to study memory and its development, each with various advantages and limitations. Further, there are notable gaps in how often different types of naturalistic approaches have been combined with cognitive neuroscience methods (e.g., fMRI, EEG) to elucidate the neural processes and substrates involved in memory encoding and retrieval in the real world. Here we summarize and discuss what we identify as progressively more naturalistic methodologies used in the memory literature (movie, virtual reality, staged-events inside and outside of the lab, photo-taking, and naturally occurring event studies). Our goal is to describe each approach's benefits (e.g., naturalistic quality, feasibility), limitations (e.g., viability of neuroimaging method for event encoding versus event retrieval), and discuss possible future directions with each approach. We focus on child studies, when available, but also highlight past adult studies. Although there is a growing body of child memory research, naturalistic approaches combined with cognitive neuroscience methodologies in this domain remain sparse. Overall, this viewpoint article reviews how we can study memory through the lens of developmental cognitive neuroscience, while utilizing naturalistic and real-world events.

The effects of emotion on retrospective duration memory using virtual reality

Our memories for temporal duration may be colored by the emotions we experience during an event. While emotion generally enhances some aspects of memory, temporal duration has been shown to be particularly susceptible to emotion-induced distortions. However, prior work has faced difficulty when studying this phenomenon, having to make some trade-offs on ecological validity or experimental control. Here, we sought to bridge this gap by studying the effects of emotion on temporal duration memory using virtual reality. In the present study, a final sample of 69 participants experienced a series of negative-emotional and neutral worlds within virtual reality. Following this, participants provided ratings of emotionality (arousal, valence, pleasantness) and retrospective duration estimates (i.e., remembered time). We hypothesized that negative events would be recalled as having a greater duration than neutral events (H1). We additionally hypothesized that negative, but not neutral, events would be recalled as being longer than the true duration (H2). The results supported H1 while failing to provide evidence in support of H2. Together, the results bolster the importance of emotion, especially negative emotion, in shaping how we remember the temporal unfolding of the past.

The role of bodily self-consciousness in episodic memory of naturalistic events: an immersive virtual reality study

Recent studies suggest that the human body plays a critical role in episodic memory. Still, the precise relationship between bodily self-consciousness (BSC) and memory formation of specific events, especially in real-life contexts, remains a topic of ongoing research. The present study investigated the relationship between BSC and episodic memory (EM) using immersive virtual reality (VR) technology. Participants were immersed in an urban environment with naturalistic events, while their visuomotor feedback was manipulated in three within-subjects conditions: Synchronous, Asynchronous, and No-body. Our results show that asynchronous visuomotor feedback and not seeing one's body, compared to synchronous feedback, decrease the sense of self-identification, self-location and agency, and sense of presence. Moreover, navigating in the Asynchronous condition had a detrimental impact on incidental event memory, perceptual details, contextual association, subjective sense of remembering, and memory consolidation. In contrast, participants in the No-Body condition were only impaired in egocentric spatial memory and the sense of remembering at ten-day delay. We discuss these findings in relation to the role of bodily self-representation in space during event memory encoding. This study sheds light on the complex interplay between BSC, sense of presence, and episodic memory processes, and strengthens the potential of embodiment and VR technology in studying and enhancing human cognition.

Development of an intelligent system based on metaverse learning for students with disabilities

Due to the coronavirus-2019 pandemic, people have had to work and study using the Internet such that the strengthened metaverse has become a part of the lives of people worldwide. The advent of technology linking the real and virtual worlds has facilitated the transmission of spatial audio and haptics to allow the metaverse to offer multisensory experiences in diverse fields, especially in teaching. The main idea of the proposed project is the development of a simple intelligent system for meta-learning. The suggested system should be self-configurable according to the different users of the metaverse. We aimed to design and create a virtual learning environment using Open Simulator based on a 3D virtual environment and simulation of the real-world environment. We then connected this environment to a learning management system (Moodle) through technology for 3D virtual environments (Sloodle) to allow the management of students, especially those with different abilities, and followed up on their activities, tests, and exams. This environment also has the advantage of storing educational content. We evaluated the performance of the Open Simulator in both standalone and grid modes based on the login times. The result showed times the standalone and grid modes of 12 s and 16 s, which demonstrated the robustness of the proposed platform. We also tested the system on 50 disabled learners, according to the t-test of independent samples. A test was conducted in the mathematics course, in which the students were divided into two equal groups (n = 25 each) to take the test traditionally and using the chair test tool, which is one of the most important tools of the Sloodle technology. According to the results, the null hypothesis was rejected, and we accepted the alternative hypothesis that demonstrated a difference in achievement between the two groups.