Virtual reality can increase the effectiveness of training.
Researchers from the University of Maryland have shown that people in virtual reality helmets remember information better than from a desktop computer monitor.
The study involved two groups of people who tried both in a VR helmet and on a computer to remember the location of images of celebrities and world-famous fictional characters in the so-called “memory palaces”. As “palaces” were used a computer-generated image of the richly decorated rooms of the castle and the street of the medieval city.
Among the 40 characters whose locations the test participants had to memorize in five minutes were Abraham Lincoln, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Marilyn Monroe, Hillary Clinton, Mickey Mouse, Batman, Shrek, and others.
After a 2-minute pause, the same “memory palaces” appeared in front of the test subjects with numbers instead of images of celebrities. The participants of the experiment had to correctly match the numbers with the pictures in which they were located.
According to the test results, the score of 40% of participants was at least 10% higher when they studied the “palaces” in a VR helmet, rather than using a mouse and a computer monitor.
Many subjects noted that the effect of being present in virtual reality helped them focus better.
According to Amitabh Varshni, Dean of the Institute of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences at UMD, immersive technologies such as VR and AR represent new ways to improve the effectiveness of education and highly qualified training.
