NEUROBEHAVIORAL CORRELATES OF EMBODIMENT IN IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL-REALITY-ASSISTED LEARNING

This project aims to investigate the effect of embodiment in immersive virtual reality (iVR) learning. Implementing iVR in the classroom is an opportunity to increase student engagement, and researchers suspect that iVR’s potential for sensorimotor engagement in learning (i.e., embodiment) is a means of improving learning outcomes. Embodiment in the real world consistently improves learning outcomes, but research has not always supported this same relationship in iVR learning. Thus, it is not clear whether embodiment plays a role in iVR-assisted learning. To investigate this, I recorded learning outcomes (short-term and long-term) and neural activity in scenarios of low, medium, and high embodiment word-learning in iVR. I used neural activity to glean deeper insight into embodiment’s seemingly complex relationship with behavioral iVR learning outcomes. Results, similar to past research, show that embodiment had a negative effect overall. However, increasing embodiment may have increasingly protected learned words from long-term decay. Neural data suggest that the L-AG played a significant role in processing related to long-term learning outcomes, suggesting it may underlie the observed protective effects of embodiment. Results led me to suggest that intertwined effects of novelty, distraction, and decreased sense of presence were drivers of embodiment’s short-term negative effects, and research shows that more effective implementation of iVR learning should negate these issues. Based on these neurobehavioral data, it seems embodiment has a negative effect on short-term iVR-assisted learning outcomes and a protective effect on successfully-learned information over time.