Vocabulary Acquisition in New and Learned Contexts Using Immersive Virtual Reality

This study investigates whether recycling vocabulary in immersive virtual reality (IVR) across new or learned contexts affects learners' ability to retrieve words in a new context. The authors built a system called Wics (words in contexts system) and tested 32 Japanese words, represented as 3D objects, across three learning sessions with 22 participants after exclusions. In the second and third sessions, one condition placed words in changed environments with changed object appearances (new context), while the other kept the environment and appearances constant and changed only object placement (learned context). Participants were tested immediately after learning and again one week later, with both tests conducted inside IVR.

Neither the immediate post-test nor the delayed post-test showed a statistically significant difference between conditions. Median performance was roughly 89 percent for the learned context group and 80 percent for the new context group on the immediate test, and 77 percent versus 73 percent on the delayed test. The learned context group spent noticeably more time in learning environments, a difference that was not significant at the conventional 95 percent threshold but approached significance at 90 percent. Informal correlation analysis suggested that longer learning time may have aided the immediate test but not retention.

The study sample was small and drawn largely from experienced IVR users recruited through an online community, with the researchers acknowledging that the auditory input was identical across conditions and that the visual aspect of words may have been weakly encoded. The authors position Wics as the first IVR system combining multiple learning sessions, learner-controlled exploration, and in-headset post-tests, and they suggest that the ease of changing virtual environments in IVR is a valuable resource for language learning research.