Exploring Spatial Cognitive Residue and Methods to Clear Users’ Minds When Transitioning Between Virtual Environments

In most cases, retaining memories of things we have experienced in the past is desirable, but in some cases, we want to clear our minds so that we may focus completely on subsequent activities. When someone switches from one task to another, they commonly incur some “cognitive residue” where some of their cognitive resources such as working memory and attention remain devoted to their previous task even after they try to switch their focus to their new task. This residue could have a negative impact on their performance in the next task, and in such circumstances, it is important to reduce that residue. In this paper, we explore the concept of cognitive residue in the context of switching between virtual reality (VR) environments. We conducted a human-subject experiment (N=24) with a spatial recall task to investigate how different visual transitions might reduce participants’ spatial cognitive residue. In this instance, more errors on the recall task corresponds to less spatial cognitive residue. We found that transitions that lasted one minute successfully reduced spatial cognitive residue: they significantly reduced participants’ abilities to recall the positions of objects in their previous VE compared to an instantaneous cut transition. Additionally, for transitions that showed a nature scene, greater head movement significantly correlated with more spatial memory errors (i.e., less spatial cognitive residue). We discuss how these findings can be applied to support users transitioning between virtual tasks and environments in VR task switching scenarios.