Agency-Enhanced Visual Search in VR: Robust to Distraction, Delay, and Perspective Shifts

Paper Title

Agency-Enhanced Visual Search in VR: Robust to Distraction, Delay, and Perspective Shifts

Publication Info

• Topic area: Investigating the implicit effects of the sense of agency on visual attention in virtual reality (VR).
• Keywords: Sense of agency, visual attention, virtual reality, attentional guidance, temporal delay, spatial adaptability, exogenous distraction, human-computer interaction, immersive environments.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: The implicit role of the sense of agency in guiding visual-spatial attention has been largely overlooked, particularly under conditions of distraction, delay, and spatial shifts.
• Significance: Understanding agency-driven attention can inform the design of immersive systems, enhancing user engagement and performance in VR and augmented reality (AR).
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has focused on the subjective experience of agency or its implicit mechanisms, but gaps remain in understanding its robustness under real-world disruptions. This study builds on findings that agency enhances visual search efficiency but seeks to test its resilience to external challenges.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A series of three controlled VR experiments to investigate the robustness of agency-driven attention under exogenous distractions, temporal delays, and spatial transformations.
• Novelty:
  1. Demonstrates that agency-driven attention persists despite competing visual distractors.
  2. Shows that the effect withstands temporal delays of up to 1.5 seconds.
  3. Confirms that agency effects transfer across changes in spatial configuration and perspective.
  4. Provides a unified framework bridging cognitive science and human-computer interaction (HCI).
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Participants controlled a virtual hand in a VR environment and performed visual search tasks.
  • Experimental manipulations included introducing salient distractors, varying delay intervals, and altering spatial layouts.
  • Reaction times and accuracy were measured as proxies for attentional guidance.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Agency-driven attention reduced visual search times by 11.32% in Experiment 1 (distraction condition).
  • The effect persisted across delays up to 1.5 seconds in Experiment 2, with a significant agency benefit (F(1, 30) = 12.58, p < .001, η² = .30).
  • Agency effects remained robust under spatial transformations in Experiment 3, with a significant main effect of agency (F(1, 30) = 16.50, p < .001, η² = .35).
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Agency consistently improved search performance compared to non-controlled targets, even under adverse conditions.
  • The effect was independent of bottom-up salience, which had a stronger influence overall (η² = .54 vs. η² = .41 in Experiment 1).
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Experiment 1: Tested agency against salient distractors using 39 participants.
  • Experiment 2: Examined temporal adaptability with 31 participants across four delay intervals.
  • Experiment 3: Assessed spatial adaptability with the same 31 participants under two perspective conditions.
  • Metrics: Reaction time, accuracy, and exclusion of outliers (e.g., ±2.5 SDs).
• Limitations and future work:
  • Did not quantify the influence of movement kinematics on agency detection.
  • Binary manipulation of agency (full control vs. no control) limits real-world applicability.
  • Future studies should explore partial controllability, eye-tracking integration, and systematic variations in avatar-environment relationships.

Summary

This study demonstrates that the sense of agency, induced by prior active control, robustly enhances visual attention in VR environments. The effect persists despite distractions, temporal delays up to 1.5 seconds, and spatial transformations, though it attenuates for targets beyond peripersonal space. These findings provide actionable insights for designing interactive systems in VR and AR, emphasizing the importance of agency-driven attentional guidance. Future work should explore nuanced agency scenarios and integrate additional metrics like eye-tracking to further refine interactive system design.