Task switching training when interacting with several virtual worlds simultaneously

Today's virtual reality (VR) environments can offer highly immersive experiences to users and a high sense of presence in these environments. Moreover, this sense of presence can be felt simultaneously in several virtual worlds, while users interact with each and move between them. In the current study, we hypothesized that enhancing humans' physical capabilities by being present in several virtual worlds simultaneously will contribute positively to task switching training. We evaluated our hypothesis by examining the effectiveness of task switching training when the tasks are executed in one, two, and four different virtual worlds. The study randomly assigned 59 participants to one of three between-participants groups. The results demonstrated that although participants' training experiences in the 1–World, 2–Worlds, and 4–Worlds groups were similar regarding training time and errors performed during training, the varied environments produced different results in the transfer phase. More worlds caused significantly longer transfer times. Additionally, the 4–Worlds group made many more errors when selecting the correct model to be assembled compared to the 1–World group. Hence, our hypothesis was not supported, with the findings pointing in the opposite direction. Instead of improving the task switching training, switching between tasks located in several different virtual worlds caused performance to deteriorate in the transfer task. The findings might imply that performing tasks set in multiple virtual worlds simultaneously can lower the cognitive load compared to performing them in one environment and can deteriorate the transfer of training.