Use of Neurophysiological Metrics Within a Real and Virtual Perceptual Skills Task to Assess Virtual Training Environment Fidelity Requirements

Abstract

Both military and civilian virtual environment (VE) developers are increasingly looking to cognitive scientists to provide virtual training platforms to support optimal training effectiveness within significant time and cost constraints. A need exists for objective and efficient methods of identifying optimal fidelity characteristics to support transfer of training. Previous research has demonstrated that brain eventrelated potentials (ERP’s) are sensitive to slight variations in virtual task environment fidelity, even in cases in which task performance does not significantly differ. The current experiment compared physiological and performance data for subjects completing a real-world perceptual discrimination task, as well as a similarly-structured VE training task under systematically varied fidelity conditions, in an effort to characterize the impact ofthe various conditions. Significant differences were found for task condition (real world versus virtual, as well as visual stimulus parameters within each condition), within both the performance and physiological data.