Exploring Object Recall in an Object-Rich AR Office Scene

Tom Bullock, Emily Machniak, You-Jin Kim, Radha Kumaran, Justin Kasowski, Apurv Varshney, Julia Ram, Melissa M. Hernandez, Stina Johansson, Neil M. Dundon, Tobias Höllerer, Barry Giesbrecht:
SABER: Spatial Attention, Brain, Extended Reality. In: IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, IEEE VR 2026
Presented: IEEE VR 2026 - [Brain Sensing and Stimulation Session] March 25, 2026, Daegu, Korea
▪️  DOI: 10.1109/VR67842.2026.00042    ▪️  arXiv: 10.48550/arXiv.2610.18183

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) changes how users perceive and attend to their surroundings. Prior work suggests AR can reduce attention to the physical world, but it remains unclear whether this holds in environments dense with both virtual and physical objects, and which factors most affect object recall. This study examines recall in a mixed-reality office scene after an object-selection task, testing object-level factors (virtuality, size), context-level factors (semantic congruency, saliency), and user-level factors (cueing, dual tasking). Cueing informed participants of a later recall test, while dual tasking added cognitive load through a secondary audio task. Virtual objects were recalled more accurately than physical ones. Cueing produced a modest improvement in recall of present objects. Using playback software to reconstruct each participant's view throughout the trials, we computed object-level saliency and found a weak positive correlation with recall, slightly stronger than the effects of virtuality, but not reaching statistical significance. These findings have implications for AR interface design and for building mixed-reality environments that better support cognition during real-world tasks.

Research Contributions

• Univariate EEG metrics used for 2D spatial attention generalize effectively to immersive, dynamic 3D virtual reality environments.

• Alpha oscillations (8–13 Hz) accurately track the moment-by-moment 3D location and trajectory of moving, goal-relevant objects.

• Inverted Encoding Models successfully reconstruct spatially selective neural responses to objects moving through expansive 3D virtual space.

• Looming distractors capture attention near interception points, reducing the spatial selectivity of the brain’s representation of the target.

• The framework demonstrates that the brain’s alpha-band activity continuously updates priority maps during naturalistic attentional pursuit in 3D space.

Citation IEEE Format

[1] T. Bullock, E. Machniak, Y-J. Kim, R. Kumaran, J. Kasowski, A. Varshney, J. Ram, M. M. Hernandez, S. Johansson, N. M. Dundon, T. Höllerer, and B. Giesbrecht, "SABER: Spatial Attention, Brain, Extended Reality," in Proc. 2026 IEEE Conf. Virtual Reality 3D User Interfaces (VR), 2026, pp. 195–205. doi: 10.1109/VR67842.2026.00042. (11 Pages)

Citation APA Format

Bullock, T., Machniak, E., Kim, Y-J., Kumaran, R., Kasowski, J., Varshney, A., Ram, J., Hernandez, M. M., Johansson, S., Dundon, N. M., Höllerer, T., & Giesbrecht, B. (2026). SABER: Spatial Attention, Brain, Extended Reality. 2026 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), 195–205. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR67842.2026.00042. (11 Pages)