Examining Whether Secondary Effects of Temperature-Associated Virtual Stimuli Influence Subjective Perception of Duration

Past work in augmented reality has shown that temperature-associated AR stimuli can induce warming and cooling sensations in the user, and prior work in psychology suggests that a person’s body temperature can influence that person’s sense of subjective perception of duration. In this paper, we present a user study to evaluate the relationship between temperature-associated virtual stimuli presented on an AR-HMD and the user’s sense of subjective perception of duration and temperature. In particular, we investigate two independent variables: the apparent temperature of the virtual stimuli presented to the participant, which could be hot or cold, and the location of the stimuli, which could be in direct contact with the user, in indirect contact with the user, or both in direct and indirect contact simultaneously. We investigate how these variables affect the users’ perception of duration and perception of body and environment temperature by having participants make prospective time estimations while observing the virtual stimulus and answering subjective questions regarding their body and environment temperatures. Our work confirms that temperature-associated virtual stimuli are capable of having significant effects on the users’ perception of temperature, and highlights a possible limitation in the current augmented reality technology in that no secondary effects on the users’ perception of duration were observed.