Reducing cognitive load through virtual environments among hearing-impaired students

Virtual environment provides 3D spatial sense for hearing-impaired students, which is able to increase their flexible thinking. The study therefore takes advantage of virtual environment designing motion trajectory in order to figure out the element influencing 3D spatial sense. There are 23 hearing-impaired students in this research. Two factors are executed in the study: one is "leading object" and the other is "reference object". Each factor contains two levels; hence, there are four treatments in this experiment. This research uses "maze" as a virtual environment tool and employs 3D models to construct a virtual environment. The focus of this research is to find out the best treatment and in the meantime to prevent children from cognition burdens. The result of this research is that the best treatment of motion trajectory depends on the treatment of "leading object" and "reference object" for hearing-impaired students when they grab spatial concepts, which can effectively enhance their spatial sense in virtual environment. In addition, the research could be served as a reference standard for relative issues concerning the design of 3D virtual environment for hearing-impaired pupils. Copyright © 2010 IEEE.