Transforming language research from classic desktops to virtual environments

Virtual Reality (VR) offers novel opportunities for investigating human perception beyond conventional laboratory settings, facilitating the study of naturalistic behavior with controlled virtual environments. To benefit from this technology, the foundational aspects must be compared to traditional personal computer (PC) monitor setups. The validity and reliability of stimuli presentation and response collection must be established to ensure that any findings can be attributed to experimental variables, not the method. To address this, we designed a single-word recognition (lexical decision) task administered in both VR and PC monitor setups. Stimulus presentation was controlled across tasks, visual angles were matched, and responses were gathered via VR controllers in both settings. Results replicated the lexicality effect (i.e., faster word than pseudoword reading) in both setups. Reaction times and error rates showed no significant differences between VR and PC monitor setups, underscoring VR's utility for collecting reliable behavioral data in language studies. These results demonstrate that VR-derived mental chronometry measures yield findings comparable to conventional methods, establishing a benchmark for future immersive research.