Cognitive Processes during Virtual Reality Learning: A Study of Brain Wave

Virtual Reality (VR) has gained popularity in educational fields enabling new learning possibilities. In the implementation process, VR could improve learning by increasing positive affective and cognitive processing, whereas VR also could hurt learning by increasing distraction and leading to poorer learning outcomes. Thus, understanding the cognitive processes that occur during the learning process using VR can provide sufficient information to unlock the learning potential. This research aims to determine cognitive processes through brain waves when participants perform VR learning and reading activity. Cognitive processing during VR learning was compared to the reading process because reading was a fundamental activity of the learning process and one of the most common ways of accessing knowledge. Brain Wave data on attention and meditation were collected using the Mindset EEG headset developed by Neurosky Inc., in which participants read the material and experienced VR simulation regarding the weightlessness concept. The results show that reading activity has a higher attention level than VR learning due to the many learning modalities in VR learning causing cognitive overload. Regarding the level of meditation, the brain activities indicate that the reading activity and VR learning activities have the same level of meditation. One of the most plausible explanations is the absence of cybersickness in VR learning. Moreover, according to the trend analysis of the brain wave activity, VR learning can possibly enhance the learning process in specific scenarios, such as when participants complete their mission in the VR simulation and start free exploration and when participants see something that they thought was extraordinarily embodied in VR. Besides that, VR learning can also distort the learning process, such as when participants are confused during instruction about which path to take and what the next step is, then cause distraction in learning.