Action-Specific Perception & Performance on a Fitts's Law Task in Virtual Reality: The Role of Haptic Feedback

TL;DR

This study investigates how different haptic feedback modalities influence user performance and perception in a VR Fitts's law task, revealing that tactile feedback affects accuracy, reaction time, and perception in an action-specific manner.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of tactile feedback on performance and perception in VR, highlighting action-specific effects and the importance of haptic feedback in VR task design.

Findings

Electrotactile feedback improves accuracy over vibrotactile and visual feedback.

Vibrotactile feedback results in slower reaction times.

Performance modulates size, distance, and time perception in VR.

Abstract

While user's perception & performance are predominantly examined independently in virtual reality, the Action-Specific Perception (ASP) theory postulates that the performance of an individual on a task modulates this individual's spatial & time perception pertinent to the task's components & procedures. This paper examines the association between performance & perception & the potential effects that tactile feedback modalities could generate. This paper reports a user study (N=24), in which participants performed a Fitts's law target acquisition task by using three feedback modalities: visual, visuo-electrotactile, & visuo-vibrotactile. The users completed 3 Target Sizes X 2 Distances X 3 feedback modalities = 18 trials. The size perception, distance perception, & (movement) time perception were assessed at the end of each trial. Performance-wise, the results showed that electrotactile feedback facilitates a significantly better accuracy compared to vibrotactile & visual feedback, while vibrotactile provided the worst accuracy. Electrotactile & visual feedback enabled a comparable reaction time, while the vibrotactile offered a substantially slower reaction time than visual feedback. Although amongst feedback types the pattern of differences in perceptual aspects were comparable to performance differences, none of them was statistically significant. However, performance indeed modulated perception. Significant action-specific effects on spatial & time perception were detected. Changes in accuracy modulate both size perception & time perception, while changes in movement speed modulate distance perception. Also, the index of difficulty was found to modulate perception. These outcomes highlighted the importance of haptic feedback on performance, & importantly the significance of action-specific effects on spatial & time perception in VR, which should be considered in future VR studies.