Emotional states influence a wide range of cognitive processes, such as attention, memory, and decision-making, and play an increasingly recognized role in human-computer interaction (HCI). Although most prior research has focused on high-level effects of emotion, the impact of incidental emotional states on fine-grained motor behaviors such as pointing and selection remains understudied. Addressing this gap, the present study examines how affective priming with validated emotional stimuli modulates user performance in a Fitts’ Law-based pointing paradigm. By systematically varying task difficulty, we quantitatively assess the effects of emotion on core performance measures: movement time, reaction time, error rate, and throughput. Our findings demonstrate that emotion can modulate low-level motor interactions in digital environments, with important implications for the design of adaptive, emotion-aware interfaces. These results advance the theoretical understanding of the interplay between emotion, cognition, and motor control and offer actionable insights to develop more robust and personalized interactive systems.

Virtual reality (VR) offers a compelling and immersive experience; however, cybersickness (or VR sickness) stands as a significant obstacle to its widespread adoption. When a user experiences cybersickness, one’s physical condition deteriorates with various symptoms, often accompanied by an increased and destabilized heart rate and even altered perception of one’s state. In this paper, we propose to provide “False but Stable Heart rate (FSH)” feedback through auditory and vibrotactile stimulation to reversely induce a stably perceived heart rate and, thereby, alleviate cybersickness while navigating a sickness-inducing VR content. The validation of the human experiment confirmed the intended effect in a statistically significant way. Furthermore, it was found that the lesser compatible FSH feedback had a more substantial sickness reduction effect but distracted the user with the reduced immersive experience. The compatible FSH feedback still showed moderate sickness reduction with the maintained sense of presence and immersion.

The virtual reality (VR) headset is still relatively heavy, causing a significant physical and mental burden and negatively affecting the VR user experience, particularly during extended periods of use. In this paper, we present a prototype design of the “Lifter,” which utilizes a counterbalanced wire-pulley mechanism to partially relieve the weight of the VR headset (between 50% and 85%). The human subject study has confirmed that the Lifter relieved not only physical fatigue but also significantly improved mental burden, sense of immersion, presence, and flow (perception of time passing) during prolonged usage (30 minutes or more).

Vital signals tend to become destabilized and generally increase when one’s physical condition is not well. For example, experiencing virtual reality (VR) sickness brings about a deteriorated physical condition, often accompanied by an increased heart rate. Several research have shown that providing feedback of false heart rate can induce various altered perceptions, such as increased effort and anxiety. In this poster, we propose to provide false but “stable” heart rate feedback through sound and vibration while navigating a sickness-inducing VR scene. We hypothesize that the false but stable heart rate feedback will have an induced effect of calming the user down (even stabilizing the heart rate itself) and reducing the unpleasant VR sickness symptoms. A pilot study was conducted to compare three conditions, namely viewing a sickness eliciting VR content, (1) as is, (2) with the false but stable heart rate feedback through sound, and (3) with the false but stable heart rate feedback through vibration. Results showed that the level of sickness was significantly reduced by sound and vibration feedback, respectively.

While there are several theories of virtual reality (VR) sickness causes and pertinent methods suggested for mitigation, it remains an important problem. One possible solution might be to prescribe measures for just relieving the immediate symptoms (vs. addressing the very root causes). Understanding that the severity of the sickness may affect individuals differently, we examined three methods: (1) reducing the weight of the headset (using a suspension mechanism); (2) refreshing the user with a gentle breeze of wind (using a fan); (3) accompanying the VR viewing experience with mindful breathing. We assess the relative sickness reduction effect, if any, of these three measures through a comparative pilot experiment and individual case analysis. The preliminary results point to rather the importance of system usability and how it affects the relationship between the perceived immersion and the extent of sickness. The initial proposition to enhance the user’s physical condition as a way to better withstand VR sickness symptoms could not be established.