Eye-tracking and Virtual Reality in 360-degrees: exploring two ways to assess attentional orienting in rear space

The Posner cueing task is a classic experimental paradigm in cognitive science for measuring visual attention orienting abilities. Recently, it was suggested that this paradigm can be adapted in virtual reality (e.g. in an immersive and ecological environment) to evaluate the effectiveness of perceptual stimuli in directing attention and by extension to study the underlying cognitive processes. In this study, auditory and visual endogenous cue were used to voluntary orient attention at 360°. Two groups of participants (N=33 and N=28) equipped with a virtual reality headset including integrated eye-tracking performed a modified version of the Posner cueing task in a 360° immersive environment. In this task, participants had to destroy space objects, as quickly as possible, through eye interaction. Predictive visual or auditory informed participants about target location. The results show that these endogenous cues significantly improve performance even if the object to be destroyed occurred outside the visual field or through a mirror. This experiment provides one of the first demonstrations that attentional orienting mechanism can improve performances of visual information processing in an immersive and ecological 360° environment where information can appear in rear space.