Balancing Exploration and Cybersickness: Investigating Curiosity-Driven Behavior in Virtual Environments

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Li, Tangyao, Wang, Yuyang
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Li, Tangyao
Wang, Yuyang
author_facet Li, Tangyao
Wang, Yuyang
contents During virtual navigation, users exhibit varied interaction and navigation behaviors influenced by several factors. Existing theories and models have been developed to explain and predict these diverse patterns. While users often experience uncomfortable sensations, such as cybersickness, during virtual reality (VR) use, they do not always make optimal decisions to mitigate these effects. Although methods like reinforcement learning have been used to model decision-making processes, they typically rely on random selection to simulate actions, failing to capture the complexities of real navigation behavior. In this study, we propose curiosity as a key factor driving irrational decision-making, suggesting that users continuously balance exploration and cybersickness according to the free energy principle during virtual navigation. Our findings show that VR users generally adopt conservative strategies when navigating, with most participants displaying negative curiosity across trials. However, curiosity levels tend to rise when the virtual environment changes, illustrating the dynamic interplay between exploration and discomfort. This study provides a quantitative approach to decoding curiosity-driven behavior during virtual navigation, offering insights into how users balance exploration and the avoidance of cybersickness. Future research will further refine this model by incorporating additional psychological and environmental factors to improve the accuracy of navigation pattern predictions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_04905
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Balancing Exploration and Cybersickness: Investigating Curiosity-Driven Behavior in Virtual Environments
Li, Tangyao
Wang, Yuyang
Human-Computer Interaction
During virtual navigation, users exhibit varied interaction and navigation behaviors influenced by several factors. Existing theories and models have been developed to explain and predict these diverse patterns. While users often experience uncomfortable sensations, such as cybersickness, during virtual reality (VR) use, they do not always make optimal decisions to mitigate these effects. Although methods like reinforcement learning have been used to model decision-making processes, they typically rely on random selection to simulate actions, failing to capture the complexities of real navigation behavior. In this study, we propose curiosity as a key factor driving irrational decision-making, suggesting that users continuously balance exploration and cybersickness according to the free energy principle during virtual navigation. Our findings show that VR users generally adopt conservative strategies when navigating, with most participants displaying negative curiosity across trials. However, curiosity levels tend to rise when the virtual environment changes, illustrating the dynamic interplay between exploration and discomfort. This study provides a quantitative approach to decoding curiosity-driven behavior during virtual navigation, offering insights into how users balance exploration and the avoidance of cybersickness. Future research will further refine this model by incorporating additional psychological and environmental factors to improve the accuracy of navigation pattern predictions.
title Balancing Exploration and Cybersickness: Investigating Curiosity-Driven Behavior in Virtual Environments
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.04905