Stereoscopic perception of women in real and virtual environments : A study towards educational neuroscience

Part of : Themes in science and technology education ; Vol.6, No.2, 2013, pages 109-120

Issue:
Pages:
109-120
Author:
Abstract:
Previous studies report the involvement of specific brain activation in stereoscopic vision and the perception of depth information. This work presents the first comparative results of adult women on the effects of stereoscopic perception in three different static environments; a real, a two dimensional (2D) and a stereoscopic three dimensional (3D), all with the same content. Electric brain activity of 36 female students was analyzed at θ, α, β and γ frequency bands. Results in alpha rhythm as well as alpha desynchronization showed that the topology of cerebral activity is the same in the three environments. The participants experienced three similar and non-demanding environments without specific memory requirements and information encoding. Statistical differences in theta activity showed that the real and 3D environments caused similar cognitive processes, while the 2D caused an increase of anxiety indicating that perhaps participants were looking for the third dimension. Beta and gamma activity showed that participants perceived the third dimension of the stereoscopic environment as in the real one, something that did not happen in the 2D environment. Our findings indicate that stereoscopic 3D virtual environments seem to approximate the real ones as far as it regards the cognitive processes they cause. Three dimensional stereoscopic environments increase users’ attention over the 2D and cause less mental effort. These experimental results support the new field of educational neuroscience and its potential to the design of digital learning environments.
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Subject (LC):
Keywords:
Stereoscopic perception, brain activity, EEG, virtual environments, educational neuroscience
References (1):
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