Impact of User Mobility on Attentional Tunneling in Handheld AR

Attentional tunneling in augmented reality (AR) refers to a phenomenon where users pay disproportionately high attention to virtual content while ignoring events in the real world. Although many handheld AR applications are deployed in public places where users are expected to be attentive to their surroundings while walking freely, the effect of user mobility on attentional tunneling is not yet ascertained. To investigate the effects of user mobility, we designed a 2x3 study comparing two postures (stationary and walking) with three AR tasks (a non-cognitive baseline task, a working memory task, and a perceptual monitoring task). The results suggest that walking significantly magnifies the tunneling effect, provided the user is engaged with a task that is associated with the virtual content being viewed. We demonstrate the significance of considering user mobility when evaluating AR application usage and provide guidelines for designers to evaluate the application in such scenarios.