Figure 5
Source publication
Mental rotation (MR) is an important aspect of cognitive processing in gaming since transformation and manipulation of visuospatial information are necessary in order to execute a gaming task. This study provides insights on saccadic characteristics in gaming task performance that involves 2D and 3D isomorphic objects with varying angular disparity...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... infer the statistical significance, the investigators used alpha level 0.05 throughout this paper. Fig. 5 shows the major steps in the study for analyzing the gaze data from the eye-tracker, task performance measures from the MR gaming-tasks, and CWL scores from the NASA-TLX test (Tab. 3). ...
Citations
... Response times and accuracy rates are widely employed in examining a mental rotation effect and mental rotation performance (Shepard and Metzler, 1971;Berneiser et al., 2018), but these behavioral indices are not sufficient to fully understand the related complex cognitive processes. Recent studies have provided evidence that eye movement characteristics are promising for examining these mental processes (Xue et al., 2017;Toth and Campbell, 2019;Tiwari et al., 2021). ...
Introduction
Eye-tracking technology provides a reliable and cost-effective approach to characterize mental representation according to specific patterns. Mental rotation tasks, referring to the mental representation and transformation of visual information, have been widely used to examine visuospatial ability. In these tasks, participants visually perceive three-dimensional (3D) objects and mentally rotate them until they identify whether the paired objects are identical or mirrored. In most studies, 3D objects are presented using two-dimensional (2D) images on a computer screen. Currently, visual neuroscience tends to investigate visual behavior responding to naturalistic stimuli rather than image stimuli. Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology used to provide naturalistic stimuli, allowing the investigation of behavioral features in an immersive environment similar to the real world. However, mental rotation tasks using 3D objects in immersive VR have been rarely reported.
Methods
Here, we designed a VR mental rotation task using 3D stimuli presented in a head-mounted display (HMD). An eye tracker incorporated into the HMD was used to examine eye movement characteristics during the task synchronically. The stimuli were virtual paired objects oriented at specific angular disparities (0, 60, 120, and 180°). We recruited thirty-three participants who were required to determine whether the paired 3D objects were identical or mirrored.
Results
Behavioral results demonstrated that the response times when comparing mirrored objects were longer than identical objects. Eye-movement results showed that the percent fixation time, the number of within-object fixations, and the number of saccades for the mirrored objects were significantly lower than that for the identical objects, providing further explanations for the behavioral results.
Discussion
In the present work, we examined behavioral and eye movement characteristics during a VR mental rotation task using 3D stimuli. Significant differences were observed in response times and eye movement metrics between identical and mirrored objects. The eye movement data provided further explanation for the behavioral results in the VR mental rotation task.
... In the light of the above discussion, the current study hypothesizes that spatial information (angular disparity) plays a much influential role than the visual ones (dimensionality) while utilizing the dorsal-ventral pathways in MR, the dorsal pathway is expected to be more engaged than the ventral ones. Also, as CA and 2D are found more challenging than RA and 3D in the previous study [25], it is expected to reflect higher activation in dorsal-ventral pathway for CA and 2D in this study. As a result, the dorsal-ventral pathways are likely to be active while playing the MR computer-game, depending on objects' angular disparity and dimensionality. ...
... A computer-game was designed in Unity3D gaming engine based on parity judgment tasks [25]. In contrast to previous studies, isomorphic 2D and 3D objects/models were utilized to examine the effects of dimensionality to avoid the confounding factor due to different object categories. ...
... We computed the spectra for theta (4-7.5 Hz), alpha (7.5-13 Hz), beta (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), and lower gamma bands (30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45) for studying the spatio-spectral changes. An increase in frontal midline theta power with a decrease in parietal alpha power in mental rotation tasks suggests heightened visuospatial representation processing and working memory, respectively. ...
In performing a gaming task, mental rotation (MR) is one of the important aspects of visuospatial processing. MR involves dorsal-ventral pathways of the brain. Visual objects/models used in computer-games play a crucial role in gaming experience of the users. The visuospatial characteristics of the objects used in the computer-game influence the engagement of dorsal-ventral visual pathways. The current study investigates how the objects' visuospatial characteristics (i.e., angular disparity and dimensionality) in an MR-based computer-game influence the cortical activities in dorsal-ventral visual pathways. Both the factors have two levels, angular disparity: convex angle (CA) vs. reflex angle (RA) and dimensionality: 2D vs. 3D. Sixty healthy adults, aged, 18-29 years (M = 21.6) were recruited for the study and randomly assigned to four gaming conditions i.e., 15 participants in each group. The multichannel electroencephalogram (EEG) data were recorded from 60 healthy adults while playing the game. The source reconstruction was done for ∼3000 sources inside the brain using the Dynamic Imaging of Coherent Sources (DICS) beamforming method for θ1(4-5.75), θ2(5.75-7.5), α1(7.5-9), α2(9-11), α3(11-13), β1(13-17.25), β2(17.25-21.5) Hz frequency sub-bands. The reconstructed neuronal sources were segmented into 68 functionally parcellated brain regions, and the percentage of active sources for each region was computed. Further, the differences across the 68 regions among the four gaming conditions were evaluated using the percentage of active sources. The differences in activation for the dorsal-ventral pathways and some additional brain regions were observed among the four groups. The game with 2D objects and CA showed higher activation than that with 3D objects and RA, respectively. The dorsal pathway was found to be more active in contrast to the ventral pathway. The findings suggest that angular disparity and dimensionality in MR influence the engagement of dorsal-ventral visual pathways in such a way that angular disparity has a greater impact on cortical activation across this region than dimensionality. Also, higher activation for CA as compared to RA irrespective of dimensionality reflects the complexity of spatial information processing under CA. Similarly, greater activation was seen for 2D objects than 3D, indicating difficulty in information processing due to deficient visual features.
... Due to the task being allocentric, alpha desynchronization is expected in the brain areas associated with the task. Also, since CA and 2D were found more challenging than RA and 3D in the previous study [28], it is expected to reflect higher active areas as no. of clusters for CA and 2D. Further, the object characteristics in the task also affect the strategy selection during the MR process; therefore, the cortical activation may vary depending on whether an individual selects a piecemeal or holistic approach [29]. ...
... The parity tasks are the most commonly used in the previous MR studies, where an individual had to find the pair of given visual patterns from the given choices by mentally rotating them; see Fig. 1. We designed a parity judgmentbased computer-game using the Unity3D game engine [28]. Multi-arms 3D models (similar to [5]) and their isomorphic 2D models were utilized, referred to as objects, to invoke mental rotation in the game. ...
Computer gaming is one of the most common activities that individuals are indulged in their usual activities concerning interactive systembased entertainment. Visuospatial processing is an essential aspect of mental rotation (MR) in playing computer-games. Previous studies have explored how objects' features affect theMRprocess; however, non-isomorphic 2Dand 3D objects lack a fair comparison. In addition, the effects of these features on brain activation during the MR in computer-games have been less investigated. This study investigates how dimensionality and angular disparity affect brain activation duringMRin computer-games.EEG(electroencephalogram) data were recorded from sixty healthy adults while playing an MR-based computer game. Isomorphic 2D and 3D visual objects with convex and reflex angular disparity were presented in the game. Cluster-based permutation tests were applied on EEG spectral power for frequency range 3.5-30 Hz to identify significant spatio-spectral changes. Also, the band-specific hemispheric lateralization was evaluated to investigate task-specific asymmetry. The results indicated higher alpha desynchronization in the left hemisphere during MR compared to baseline. The fronto-parietal areas showed neural activations during the game with convex angular disparities and 3D objects, for a frequency range of 7.8-14.2Hz and 7.8-10.5Hz, respectively. These areas also showed activations during the game with reflex angular disparities and 2D objects, but for narrower frequency bands, i.e., 8.0-10.0 Hz and 11.0- 11.7 Hz, respectively. Left hemispheric dominance was observed for alpha and beta frequencies. However, the right parietal region was notably more dominant for convex angular disparity and 3D objects. Overall, the results showed higher neural activities elicited by convex angular disparities and 3D objects in the game compared to the reflex angles and 2Dobjects. The findings suggest future applications, such as cognitive modeling and controlled MR training using computer games.
