Evaluating Preattentive Features for Detecting Changes in Virtual Environments

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kim, DongHoon, Cho, Isaac
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Kim, DongHoon
Cho, Isaac
author_facet Kim, DongHoon
Cho, Isaac
contents Visual perception plays a critical role in detecting changes within immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environments. However, as visual complexity increases, perceptual performance declines, making it more difficult to detect changes quickly and accurately. This study examines how visual features, known for facilitating preattentive processing, impact a change detection task in immersive 3D environments, with a focus on visual complexity, object attributes, and spatial proximity. Our results demonstrate that preattentive processing enhances change detection, particularly when the altered object is spatially isolated and not perceptually grouped with similar surrounding objects. Changes to isolated objects were detected more reliably, suggesting that perceptual isolation reduces cognitive load and draws more attention. Conversely, when a changed object was surrounded by visually similar elements, participants were less likely to detect the change, indicating that perceptual grouping hinders individual object recognition in complex scenes. These results provide guidelines for designing VR applications that strategically utilize spatial isolation and visual features to improve the user experience.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_14561
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evaluating Preattentive Features for Detecting Changes in Virtual Environments
Kim, DongHoon
Cho, Isaac
Human-Computer Interaction
Visual perception plays a critical role in detecting changes within immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environments. However, as visual complexity increases, perceptual performance declines, making it more difficult to detect changes quickly and accurately. This study examines how visual features, known for facilitating preattentive processing, impact a change detection task in immersive 3D environments, with a focus on visual complexity, object attributes, and spatial proximity. Our results demonstrate that preattentive processing enhances change detection, particularly when the altered object is spatially isolated and not perceptually grouped with similar surrounding objects. Changes to isolated objects were detected more reliably, suggesting that perceptual isolation reduces cognitive load and draws more attention. Conversely, when a changed object was surrounded by visually similar elements, participants were less likely to detect the change, indicating that perceptual grouping hinders individual object recognition in complex scenes. These results provide guidelines for designing VR applications that strategically utilize spatial isolation and visual features to improve the user experience.
title Evaluating Preattentive Features for Detecting Changes in Virtual Environments
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14561