Random #VR paper summary. Human interaction with virtual reality: investigating pre-evacuation efficiency in building emergency (Wang, Z. Et al; October 2022).
The paper describes use of a VR simulation to asses people’s reaction to T-3 type alarms and how being engaged in a task delays a person’s response in the pre-evacuation phase. Two experimental conditions, with 30 participants in each: high-engagement task (completing a multiple-choice quiz) and low-engagement task (waiting to be called for an interview). When the alarm sounded during the tasks, 3.3% of those engaged in the low-engagement task continued with the task, while 73.3% of those engaged in the high-engagement tasks continued the task. However, few participants recognised the T-3 alarm as a cue to immediately evacuate (8 out of the 60), and many confused it for feedback from the VR simulation.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10055-022-00710-x (open access)