Interactive VR salesperson paradigm for studying event segmentation of episodic memory

Design · All designs
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q3 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description

A custom-built VR environment (Unreal Engine 4.26, HTC Vive Pro 2) in which participants "acted as salespersons interacting with customers across different booths", delivering objects while remembering the order in which objects appeared. Mission boundaries were defined by customer identity and spatial boundaries by distinct booths, yielding a 2 x 2 design of within/across boundary conditions. Memory was assessed afterwards with a recency discrimination test on a computer, with confidence ratings. Datasets, 3D models and analysis code are openly released.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

• VR hardware and the custom Unreal Engine environment with distinct booths and customer characters
• A recency discrimination test administered outside VR after each encoding block

Constraints

• Current VR environments often rely on simplified settings and artificial characters, which may limit generalizability to everyday memory processes
• The salesperson task inherently emphasized customer-related goals, potentially making conceptual boundaries more salient

Target Learners

• healthy adult volunteers

Learning Goals

• temporal order memory for object sequences encountered during interactive encoding

Claims

• Mission Boundary Crossing Impairs Vr Sequence Memory Accuracy [+M]
• Spatial Boundary Null Effect Vr Accuracy [+M]

Related Designs

Examples

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Key Sources

• Yue Li, Mikael Johansson & Andrey R. Nikolaev. (2025). Hierarchical event segmentation of episodic memory in virtual reality. npj Science of Learning. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-025-00321-6

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	design
id	vr-salesperson-event-segmentation-paradigm
title	Interactive VR salesperson paradigm for studying event segmentation of episodic memory
description	A custom-built VR environment (Unreal Engine 4.26, HTC Vive Pro 2) in which participants "acted as salespersons interacting with customers across different booths", delivering objects while remembering the order in wh...
status	review
generated	by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-26
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — yue-li-2025

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