Papers by Bernhard Riecke
Frontiers in Psychology, Apr 19, 2021
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Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, Apr 1, 2008
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There is increasing evidence of individual differences in spatial cognitive abilities and strateg... more There is increasing evidence of individual differences in spatial cognitive abilities and strategies, especially for simulated locomotion such as virtual realities. For example, Klatzky and colleagues observed two distinct response patterns in a "point-to-origin" task where participants pointed back to the origin of locomotion after a simulated 2-segment excursion. "Turners" responded as if succeeding to update their heading, whereas "non-turners" responded as if failing to update their heading - but why? Here, we investigated if one's real-world movement and movement analysis expertise (i.e., dancers versus Laban Movement Analysts) might affect one's virtual orientation behaviour. Using a virtual point-to-origin task, data showed that participants (N=39) with more extensive movement analysis expertise tended to be turners, and thus incorporate visually presented turns correctly. Conversely, dance students without Laban Movement Analysis expertise tended to be non-turners or used a mixed strategy. This suggests that reflecting about self-motion might be more conducive than movement experience, primarily dance, alone for enabling correct updating of simulated heading changes.
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Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, Feb 23, 2016
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Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2017
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Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
ABSTRACT Optic flow displays are frequently used both in spatial cognition/psy-chology research a... more ABSTRACT Optic flow displays are frequently used both in spatial cognition/psy-chology research and VR simulations to avoid the influence of recognizable landmarks. However, optic flow displays not only lead to frequent misperceptions of simulated turns, but also to drastic qualitative errors: When asked to point back to the origin of locomotion after viewing simulated 2-segment excursions in VR, between 40% (Riecke 2008) and 100% (Klatzky et al., 1998) of participants responded as if they failed to update and incorporate the visually simulated turns into their responses. To further investigate such "NonTurner" behaviour, the current study used a wider range of path geometries that allow for clearer disambiguation of underlying strategies and mental processes. 55% of participants showed clear qualitative pointing errors (left-right hemisphere errors), thus confirming the reliability of the effect and the difficulties in properly using optic flow even in high-quality VR displays. Results suggest that these qualitative errors are not caused by left-right mirrored responses, but are indeed based on a failure to properly incorporate visually presented turns into point-to-origin responses. While the majority of these qualitative errors could be attributed to NonTurner behaviour as previously proposed, we identified a novel, modified NonTurner strategy that could reconcile prior findings. Finally, results suggest that Turners (which properly incorporate visually presented turns) might use online updating of the homing direction, whereas NonTurners resort to more effortful and cognitively demanding offline strategies. Better understanding these strategies and underlying processes and how they depend on stimulus and display parameters can help to inform the design of more effective VR simulations.
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2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), Mar 1, 2020
With this work, we propose a draft classification of advantages and disadvantages between sitting... more With this work, we propose a draft classification of advantages and disadvantages between sitting and standing user interfaces in VR to stimulate discussion and future work.
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ABSTRACT Relying exclusively on visual information to maintain orientation while traveling in vir... more ABSTRACT Relying exclusively on visual information to maintain orientation while traveling in virtual environments is challenging. However, it is currently unclear how much body-based information is required to produce a significant improvement in navigation performance. In our study participants explored unfamiliar virtual mazes using visual-only and physical rotations. Participants's ability to remain oriented was measured using a novel pointing task. While men consistently benefitted from using physical rotations versus visual-only rotations (lower absolute pointing errors, configuration errors, and absolute ego-orientation errors), women did not. We discuss design implications for locomotion interfaces in virtual environments. Our findings also suggest that investigating individual differences may help to resolve apparent conflicts in the literature regarding potential benefits of physical rotational cues for effective spatial orientation.
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Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly used in spatial cognition research, as it offers high experi... more Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly used in spatial cognition research, as it offers high experimental control in naturalistic multimodal environments, which is hard to achieve in real-world settings. Although recent technological advances offer a high level of photorealism, locomotion in VR is still restricted because people might not perceive their self-motion as they would in the real world. This might be related to the inability to use embodied spatial orientation processes, which support automatic and obligatory updating of our spatial awareness. Previous research has identified the roles reference frames play in retaining spatial orientation. Here, we propose using visually overlaid rectangular boxes, simulating reference frames in VR, to provide users with a better insight into spatial direction in landmark-free virtual environments. The current mixed-method study investigated how different variations of the visually simulated reference frames might support people in a navigational search task. Performance results showed that the existence of a simulated reference frame yields significant effects on participants completion time and travel distance. Though a simulated CAVE translating with the navigator (one of the simulated reference frames) did not provide significant benefits, the simulated room (another simulated reference frame depicting a rest frame) significantly boosted user performance in the task as well as improved participants preference in the post-experiment evaluation. Results suggest that adding a visually simulated reference frame to VR applications might be a cost-effective solution to the spatial disorientation problem in VR.
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Journal of Vision, Feb 4, 2015
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Chronic stress is one of the major problems in our current fast paced society. The body reacts to... more Chronic stress is one of the major problems in our current fast paced society. The body reacts to environmental stress with physiological changes (e.g. accelerated heart rate), increasing the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. Normally the parasympathetic nervous system should bring us back to a more balanced state after the stressful event is over. However, nowadays we are often under constant pressure, with a multitude of stressful events per day, which can result in us constantly being out of balance. This highlights the importance of effective stress management techniques that are readily accessible to a wide audience. In this paper we present an exploratory study investigating the potential use of immersive virtual reality for relaxation with the purpose of guiding further design decisions, especially about the visual content as well as the interactivity of virtual content. Specifically, we developed an underwater world for head-mounted display virtual reality. We performed an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the underwater world environment for relaxation, as well as to evaluate if the underwater world in combination with breathing techniques for relaxation was preferred to standard breathing techniques for stress management. The underwater world was rated as more fun and more likely to be used at home than a traditional breathing technique, while providing a similar degree of relaxation.
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ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, Aug 1, 2009
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ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, Feb 15, 2009
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ABSTRACT Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in psychological research and applications, bu... more ABSTRACT Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in psychological research and applications, but does VR really afford natural human spatial perception/cognition, which is a prerequisite for effective spatial behavior? Using judgment of relative direction (JRD) tasks, Riecke and McNamara (2007, Abstracts of the Psychonomic Society) demonstrated orientation-specific interference between participant's actual orientation in an empty rectangular room and their to-be-imagined orientation in a previously learned room. To test whether VR yields similar interference, we replicated their study using a modified condition: We used an empty virtual (instead of real) test room presented on a 180x150deg video projection. After learning 15 target objects in a rectangular office, participants performed JRD tasks ("imagine facing X, point to Y") while facing different orientations in the virtual test room. Despite using identical procedures, seeing the virtualenvironment did not produce the same interference as a comparable real-world stimulus, suggesting qualitative differences in human spatial perception/cognition in real versus computer-simulated worlds.
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As virtual reality designers, we aim to create technological experiences to better human connecti... more As virtual reality designers, we aim to create technological experiences to better human connection and well-being in hopes of helping humankind and society in a positive way. It is therefore important to ground the frameworks we use in genuine human experience rather than mindlessly apply models that do not account for highly personal and profound experiences. One type of experience that could help create positive connection and decrease self-saliency is self-transcendence. However, currently there does not exist a concrete model for designing self-transcendent experiences for virtual reality. Lucid dreaming, being conscious one is dreaming while in the dream, has the potential to induce self-transcendence; it is essentially the ultimate virtual reality. If lucid dreaming and virtual reality are so similar, then can we research self-transcendent experiences in lucid dreaming and apply that knowledge to virtual reality? In this paper we argue that lucid dreaming could indeed act as a guide for designing transcendent experiences in virtual reality.
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Papers by Bernhard Riecke