Thesis Project Form

Visual Working Memory (VWM) is a cognitive mechanism essential for the interaction with the environment and the accomplishment of ongoing tasks, as it allows fast processing of visual inputs at the expense of the amount of information that can be stored. A better understanding of its functioning would be beneficial to research fields such as simulation and training in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) or information visualization and computer graphics.

The main objective of the thesis is to analyze VWM in virtual reality, by considering the increased field of visualization of the common VR headset, and the possibilities of controlling all the parameters of the visualized scene.

1) Following the change blindness theory, change detection and change localization experiments will be designed and implemented.
2) The VWM capacity will be assessed as a function of the number of items, the 3D spatial arrangements of items, the field of view.
3) Results will be compared with respect to the literature in standard visualization modalities.
4) Augmented reality will be then compared to Virtual Reality

Finally, data will be fitted to build a model of VWM behavior in VR/AR.

1) Development of a psychophysical experiment in Unity 3D
2) Replica of an existing experimental protocol in immersive VR
3) Experiments with subjects
4) Statistical analysis
5) Modeling of data