Influence of Sensory Conflict on Perceived Timing of Passive Rotation in Virtual Reality

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Human Perception
• Virtual Reality

Background:

• Self-motion perception relies on integrating multisensory signals.
• Consumer virtual reality (VR) often presents sensory mismatches.
• Understanding these mismatches is crucial for VR user experience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how vestibular-visual sensory discrepancies affect self-motion timing perception.
• To examine the relationship between sensory conflict and cybersickness in VR.

Main Methods:

• Participants judged the temporal order of auditory tones and passive whole-body rotations.
• Sensory conflict was induced by manipulating visual scene updates in a VR head-mounted display relative to physical motion.
• Cybersickness was quantified using severity ratings.

Main Results:

• Incongruent visual motion direction significantly shifted perceived self-motion timing.
• No timing differences were observed without vision, with congruent vision, or with slower visual updates.
• Higher cybersickness severity correlated with incongruent visual motion.

Conclusions:

• Visual-vestibular signal interaction influences the temporal perception of self-motion.
• Sensory conflict, particularly visual-vestibular incongruence, exacerbates cybersickness.
• Findings support the sensory conflict theory in VR environments.