Sustained inattentional blindness in virtual reality and under conventional laboratory conditions

摘要

Virtual reality (VR) might increase the ecological validity of psychological studies as it allows submerging into real-life experiences under controlled laboratory conditions. We intended to provide empirical evidence for this claim at the example of the famous invisible gorilla paradigm (Simons and Chabris in Perception, 28(9), 1059-1074, 1999). To this end, we confronted one group of participants with a conventional 2D-video of two teams passing basketballs. To the second group of participants, we presented the same stimulus material as a 3D360 degrees-VR-video and to a third group as a 2D360 degrees-VR-video. Replicating the original findings, in the video condition, only similar to 30% of the participants noticed the gorilla. However, in both VR-conditions, the detection rate was increased to similar to 70%. The illusion of spatial proximity in VR enhances the salience of the gorilla, thereby enhancing the noticing rate. VR mimics the perceptual characteristics of the real world and provides a useful tool for psychological studies.