Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction
Doi
Abstract
The role of affective states in cognitive performance
has long been an area of interest in cognitive science. Recent
research in game-based cognitive training suggest that cognitive
games should incorporate real-time adaptive mechanisms.
These adaptive mechanisms would change the game’s difficulty
according to the player’s performance in order to provide appropriate
challenges and thus, achieve a real cognitive improvement.
However, these mechanisms currently ignore the effects
of valence and arousal on the player’s cognitive skills. In this
paper we investigate how working memory (WM) performance
is affected when playing a VR game, and the effects of valence
and arousal in this context. To this aim, a custom video game
was created for Desktop and VR. Three difficulty levels were
designed to evoke different levels of arousal while maintaining
the same memory load for each difficulty level. We found
an improvement in WM performance when playing in VR
compared to Desktop. This effect was particularly pronounced
in those with a low WM capacity. Significantly higher levels of
valence and arousal were self-reported when playing in VR.We
explore the impact that reported affective states could have in
the player’s WM performance. We suggest that high levels
of arousal and positive valence can lead players to a flow
state [1] that may have a positive impact on the player’s WM
performance.This work is supported by Queen Mary University of London and EPSRC Media and Arts Technology Doctoral Training Centre (EP/G03723X/1)
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