Cognitive processing of traffic signs in immersive virtual reality environment: An ERP study

The virtual reality environment can provide an immersive feeling as in the real word. So, using virtual reality technology to construct realistic experimental scenarios, the mechanism of cognitive processing in the human brain could be better studied. In this paper, we have designed an experiment, where through the presentation of traffic signs with correct or incorrect background colors in a virtual reality traffic environment, and studied the cognitive processing in the human brain using event-related potential (ERP) method. The results showed that whether the background colors of traffic signs were correct or not, the degrees of familiarity to these traffic signs in the human brain were similar, and the degree of contrast between the background colors and foreground colors of traffic signs would influence the degree of difficulty in cognitive processing. The degree of complexity in contents of traffic signs appears related to the cognitive speed in the human brain. In sum, simpler contents and larger contrast between the background colors and foreground colors of traffic signs would make the human brain respond faster.

Research highlights▶ The four different background colors elicit similar P3a amplitudes. ▶ The background colors could hardly influence cognition of the traffic signs. ▶ The sharp turn traffic signs elicit an earlier P3a than that by the T-shaped turn. ▶ The degree of complexity in contents of traffic signs is related to cognitive speed. ▶ The degree of color contrast influences the degree of cognitive difficulty.