How Learners’ Visuospatial Ability and Different Ways of Changing the Perspective Influence Learning About Movements in Desktop and Immersive Virtual Reality Environments

Virtual reality (VR) applications are developing rapidly, becoming more and more affordable, and offer various advantages for learning contexts. Dynamic visualizations are generally suitable for depicting continuous processes (e.g., different movement patterns), and particularly dynamic virtual 3D-objects can provide different perspectives on the movements. The present study investigated through a low immersive (desktop “VR”, Study 1) and a high immersive virtual environment (immersive VR; Study 2) the effectiveness of different interaction formats to view 3D-objects from different perspectives. Participants controlled either the orientation of the 3D-objects (Study 1, mouse interaction; Study 2, hand interaction via VR controllers) or their viewpoint in relation to the 3D-objects (Study 1, camera position; Study 2, position of participants’ own body). Additionally, the moderating influence of learners’ visuospatial ability was addressed. Dependent variables were pictorial recognition (easy, medium, difficult), factual knowledge, presence, and motion sickness. Results showed that higher-visuospatial-ability learners outperformed lower-visuospatial-ability learners. In Study 1, higher-visuospatial-ability learners showed higher recognition performance (difficult items) by controlling the camera position, whereas lower-visuospatial-ability learners suffered from this interaction format. In Study 2, higher-visuospatial-ability learners achieved better recognition performance (easy items) by controlling the 3D-models, whereas lower-visuospatial-ability learners tended to profit from moving around the 3D-objects (medium items). The immersive VR yielded more presence and higher motion sickness. This study clearly shows that different interaction formats to view 3D-objects from multiple perspectives in Desktop-VR are not transferable on a one-to-one basis into immersive VR. The results and implications for the design of virtual learning environments are discussed.