Effects of enactment in virtual reality: a comparative experiment on memory for action

• Published in: Virtual reality : the journal of the Virtual Reality Society Vol. 27; no. 2; pp. 1025 - 1038
• Main Authors: Koßmann, Cosima, Straatmann, Tammo, Mueller, Karsten, Hamborg, Kai-Christoph
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer London 01.06.2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Graphics; Computer Science; Education; Image Processing and Computer Vision; Learning; Original Article; Questions; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction; Virtual memory systems; Virtual reality; Learning by enactment; Memory performance; Actions; Experimental design; Enactment effect; Learning medium
• ISSN: 1359-4338; 1434-9957
• DOI: 10.1007/s10055-022-00701-y

Virtual reality (VR) is thought of as a promising educational medium, especially for learning actions, as it enables learning by enactment. Learning by enactment is associated with the enactment effect which describes a superior memory for enacted actions compared to actions which have not been enacted. To date, however, little is known about whether the enactment effect across different conditions of action learning can be found in VR which sets the stage for our first research question. Additionally, as a second research question, this study explores the extent to which the memory performance of learning by enactment in VR corresponds to learning by enactment in physical reality. We conducted a VR between subjects experiment with four groups ( N  = 112) that differed in terms of condition or environment. Participants were asked to remember short action phrases for a subsequent memory test. The results indicate that learning by enactment in VR outperforms learning by reading in VR but does not exceed observational learning in VR. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the memory performance of learning by enactment in VR is similar to that in physical reality. These findings are highly relevant as they demonstrate the potential of VR as a new educational medium supporting learning by enactment.