Hello and welcome to this talk. In this paper, we investigate the claim that Augmented Reality
displays causes the Attention Tunneling effect and question whether this effect
arises due to the virtual content or the tasks associated with the virtual content.
Attention tunneling in augmented reality refers to the phenomenon where users focus excessively
on the virtual content while neglecting their physical surroundings. This has led to a number
of papers and news articles reporting on the risk of using AR devices including neglecting events
and objects, overlooking hazards during walking biking and driving and negatively impacting user
experience. A prime example of this would be the Pokemon go application which saw millions
of users and also numerous cases of accidents and trespassing while using the application.
But what causes attention tunneling in augmented reality displays? A possible cause of attention
tunneling in AR is the presence of immersive 3D content. This has been reported in previous
studies in heads-up displays and 3D displays. However, we hypothesize that the associated
task of scanning and gathering information from virtual content is what causes the attention
tunneling effect rather than the virtual content itself. This is based on previous research on
a related phenomenon called the "Inattentional blindness" effect, where users engaged with a task
tend to miss events and objects even if these events and objects are within their foveal vision.
The famous "gorillas in our midst" experiment by Simons and Chabris, as seen in the slide here,
is an example of this where participants failed to see the passing gorilla
when tasked with counting the number of passes of the ball between the players wearing white.
To test this hypothesis we conducted two experiments, both experiments were identical
but were administered via different devices. The first was administered through a handheld
AR device and the second via a web application. In both experiments participants were seated in front
of a handheld AR device or a monitor and would be required to react to LEDs turning on with the help
of a button or a mouse. Based on the condition, virtual content may also populate the display.
Each experiment had an identical set of six conditions with two independent variables.
The first independent variable - EVENT TYPE - dictated whether LEDs were real
and controlled via an arduino or whether the LED was virtual and rendered on the display.
The second independent variable - CONTENT TYPE - determined if there was any virtual content
on the screen and whether the participant was required to perform a task associated
with the virtual content. This could either be None, Blocks or Blocks plus Task. In None,
no virtual content would be rendered while in Blocks and Blocks plus Task, five blue cubes
passing around a red sphere would be rendered, this can be seen in the next slide. For each
of the condition, we also measure measured the reaction time to events of EVENT TYPE.
In the Blocks condition, participants were not instructed to perform any tasks with
the virtual content while in the Blocks plus Task condition, participants were given the additional
task of counting the number of times the red sphere was passed amongst the blue blocks. We
found that there was no significant difference in reaction times for both physical and virtual
EVENT TYPES when comparing conditions without the additional task. We, however, found a significant
increase in reaction times for both physical and virtual event types when adding a task to
the virtual content when compared to conditions without a task. We also found that participants
were significantly quicker in reacting to physical LEDs as compared to the virtual LEDs.
Our post-experiment interviews indicated that participants attributed their quicker response
to physical LEDs to the visibility of the physical LEDs on their peripheral vision.
Our second experiment controls for the visibility of physical LEDs on participants peripheral
vision by presenting all content within a web application window. Our results indicate that
the EVENT TYPE does not have a significant effect on participant reaction times for all conditions;
that is, for None, Blocks and Blocks plus Task. This suggests that peripheral vision
did contribute towards quicker reaction times towards the physical LEDs in our first experiment.
In conclusion we found that virtual content in AR application does not cause the attention
tunneling effect but the addition of a task to the virtual content can induce attention tunneling.
This implies that task relevant virtual content in AR applications can be potential attentional
sinks and should be minimalistic in applications where efficient division of attention between the
physical and virtual worlds is necessary. We also found that the smaller field of view for handheld
devices may assist users in detecting physical events. This is however dependent on whether the
event can be seen on their peripheral vision. And that is all from me thank you very much.