Auditory Stimuli Degrade Visual Performance in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Figure 1: Spatiotemporal layout of the presented experiment. (a) Spatial layout of the experiments. There were three possible locations of the visual targets (which subtended a visual angle of one degree) inside the participant’s field of view (FoV). Auditory stimuli were spatially located outside the FoV. Both the visual targets and the auditory stimuli moved in solidarity with the participant’s head. One possible combination for an audiovisual stimuli is highlighted in blue. (b) Temporal layout. Visual targets were shown 100 ms after the sound started, for a duration of 24 ms. The auditory stimulus lasted 400 ms in order for the more complex sounds to be played completely. (c) Representative close-up view of the virtual environment. The inset shows five different visual targets (a 3.2x scale is used here for visualization purposes). Participants could freely move in a physical space of 4x1.5m. Scene by Barking Dog for Unity 3D. Six different sounds were used: white noise, pink noise, brown noise, pure frequencies, train horn and human voice.