Exploring the Validity of Physiological Measures for Cognitive Load Assessment in Virtual Reality

Validité des mesures physiologiques pour l'évaluation de la charge cognitive en réalité virtuelle

Laurent Lacroix (1) , Olivier Augereau (2, 3, 4) , Nathalie Le Bigot (3, 1)

1 UBO - Université de Brest
2 Lab-STICC - Laboratoire des sciences et techniques de l'information, de la communication et de la connaissance
3 Lab-STICC_COMMEDIA - Equipe COgnition, Models and Machines for Engaging Digital Interactive Applications
4 ENIB - École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Brest

Cognitive load triggers the researchers' interest in various fields. In the context of education and training, maintaining an optimal cognitive load is crucial to keep learners engaged, ensuring that the content aligns with their skill levels. However, assessing cognitive load is challenging. In the literature, several methods have been proposed mainly through questionnaires, performance metrics and physiological sensors. In this paper, we propose an experiment in virtual reality where four different tasks has been designed to stimulate different levels of cognitive load. We compare three different ways of measuring the cognitive load to estimate the validity of physiological measures. The findings suggest that, to some extent, the physiological measures are well-suited for assessing cognitive load in the context of this study. This research contributes valuable insights to the ongoing exploration of effective cognitive load measurement methodologies.

Keywords: Cognitive Load; Virtual Reality; Physiological Measures; Cognitive workload

Domains: Computer Science [cs]; Psychology

Laurent Lacroix, Olivier Augereau, Nathalie Le Bigot. Exploring the Validity of Physiological Measures for Cognitive Load Assessment in Virtual Reality. 2024. ⟨hal-04489219⟩