Visual attention for a desktop virtual environment with ambient scent

Abstract

In the current study participants explored a desktop virtual environment (VE) representing a suburban neighborhood with signs of public disorder (neglect, vandalism, and crime), while being exposed to either room air (control group), or subliminal levels of tar (unpleasant; typically associated with burned or waste material) or freshly cut grass (pleasant; typically associated with natural or fresh material) ambient odor. They reported all signs of disorder they noticed during their walk together with their associated emotional response. Based on recent evidence that odors reflexively direct visual attention to (either semantically or affectively) congruent visual objects, we hypothesized that participants would notice more signs of disorder in the presence of ambient tar odor (since this odor may bias attention to unpleasant and negative features), and less signs of disorder in the presence of ambient grass odor (since this odor may bias visual attention toward the vegetation in the environment and away from the signs of disorder). Contrary to our expectations the results provide no indication that the presence of an ambient odor affected the participants’ visual attention for signs of disorder or their emotional response. However, the paradigm used in present study does not allow us to draw any conclusions in this respect. We conclude that a closer affective, semantic, or spatiotemporal link between the contents of a desktop VE and ambient scents may be required to effectively establish diagnostic associations that guide a user’s attention. In the absence of these direct links, ambient scent may be more diagnostic for the physical environment of the observer as a whole than for the particular items in that environment (or, in this case, items represented in the VE).

Assessment of cognitive instrumental activities of daily living: a systematic review

“…Regarding virtual tasks, the most numerous ones were aimed at shopping, money management and community mobility activities, followed by meal preparation and cleanup and Test [165] Virtual Park [164] Ice Cream Seller Test [170] Virtual Town [171] Edinburgh Virtual Errands Test [161] Multitasking in the City Test [160] (continued) [138] Inventario de S ıntomas Prefrontales [211] Computerized Meeting Preparation Task [14] Adult Executive Functioning Inventory [102] Computerized Meeting Preparation Task [14] Virtual Classroom// AULA [214] Ice Cream Seller Test [170] Virtual Week Task [40] communications management. There were no virtual tasks for activities such as care of others, care of pets, child-rearing activities, religious or spiritual activities or safety and emergency maintenance.…”

Characterizing Emotional Response to Olfactory, Auditory, and Visual Stimulations in a Virtual Reality Environment

“…While VR commonly offers auditory stimulation in addition to the visual context (4-6), it has been rarely coupled to olfactory stimulations. In some studies, environmental smells (7) or food odors (8) have been simply added to the ambient air by being diffused through commercial electronic scent diffusers in the experimental room while participants explore a virtual environment.…”

Applied olfactory cognition

“…In the first article, Smeets and Dijksterhuis ( 2014 ) review the potency of odors to affect human behavior. In the second article, Toet and van Schaik ( 2013 ) focus on how such priming are dependent on the congruency between the odor prime and the behavior that is supposed to be affected. In the third article, Köster et al ( 2014 ) reverse the typical view on memory as being triggered by cues of previously encountered objects and argue that odor memory in everyday life is about detecting novelty rather than pleasantness.…”