The Open Virtual Reality Journal




    (Discontinued)

    ISSN: 1875-323X ― Volume 3, 2014

    Cybersickness Influences the Affective Appraisal of a Virtual Environment



    Alexander Toet*, 1 , Erik D van der Spek2, Joske M. Houtkamp2
    1 TNO Human Factors, P.O. Box 23, 3769 ZG Soesterberg, The Netherlands
    2 Utrecht University, Dept. of Information and Computing Sciences, Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation (AGS), P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Abstract

    We investigated if cybersickness has an effect on the affective appraisal of a virtual environment (VE). For many applications it is essential that users experience the simulated environment in a similar way as the corresponding real one. Navigation through VEs is known to negatively influence the physical well-being of observers by inducing cybersickness. Since people tend to misattribute their feelings to the environment they perceive, cybersicknesss may influence their affective appraisal of a VE. Participants passively watched a simulated walk through a VE, while the visual scene continuously performed a quasi-sinusoidal frontal roll oscillation. Immediately after the exposure, they reported their experienced level of cybersickness and assessed the environment on a semantic differential scale. People experiencing cybersickness rated the environment as less pleasant and more arousing, as compared to people with no symptoms. Thus, users suffering from cybersickness misattributed their unpleasant feelings to the affective qualities of the VE. Applications that rely on VEs to evoke the same emotional and affective user responses as their real equivalent should therefore minimise or account for the incidence of cybersickness.

    Keywords: Affective appraisal, cybersickness, virtual enviroment.


    Article Information


    Identifiers and Pagination:

    Year: 2010
    Volume: 2
    First Page: 26
    Last Page: 31
    Publisher Id: TOVRJ-2-26
    DOI: 10.2174/1875323X01002010026

    Article History:

    Received Date: 30/8/2010
    Revision Received Date: 30/9/2010
    Acceptance Date: 10/10/2010
    Electronic publication date: 15 /11/2010
    Collection year: 2010

    © Toet et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.

    open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.


    * Address correspondence to this author at TNO Human Factors, P.O. Box 23, 3769 ZG Soesterberg, The Netherlands; Tel: (+31) 346 356 237; Fax: (+31) 346 353 977; E-mail: lex.toet@tno.nl




    Browse Contents



    Webmaster Contact: info@benthamopen.net
    Copyright © 2024 Bentham Open