ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and illustrates a variety of procedures for helping virtual environment (VE) users overcome the deleterious sensory/perceptual, behavioral, and physical effects and aftereffects that result from current technological limitations of these devices. Many of the most important of these untoward consequences of interacting with VEs are due to the presence of sensory rearrangements. A sensory rearrangement (or distortion) exists when the sensory array and/or relationship between sensory systems differs from normal, as, for example, when viewing the hand through a wedge prism. For the observer, the initial exposure to a sensory rearrangement results in misperception, the surprise of violated expectations, and perceptualmotor disruption. Because laboratory experiments indicate that human beings are capable of adapting to a wide range of optical rearrangements, it is reasonable to assume that they are equally able to adapt to the sensory rearrangements found in VEs. It follows that the variables that have been found to influence adaptation to optical rearrangements, for example, active interaction, will apply as well to VE adaptation. Therefore, the VE-training procedures described in this chapter are based on the variables demonstrated by previous research to control or influence perceptual and perceptual-motor adaptation to rearranged sensory environments. It will be proposed that the problematical aftereffects that inevitably result from VE adaptation can be reduced or eliminated by means of systematic readaptation procedures and “dual adaptation” training (i.e., repeated alternation between adaptation and readaptation). Finally, the omnipresence of individual differences in adaptation to sensory rearrangements is acknowledged and its implications for the use of VE adaptation-training procedures considered.
