ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Cognitive Neuroscience
Impact of Visual Distractors in Virtual Reality Environments on Sustained Attention Behavioral Performance and EEG Characteristics
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
- 2Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study investigates the effects of visual distractors in virtual reality (VR) environments on sustained attention behavioral performance and electroencephalographic (EEG) characteristics, with a focus on understanding how visual distraction modulates neural mechanisms of attentional allocation and regulation. Behavioral and EEG data were collected from participants performing a virtual classroom task under conditions with and without visual distractors. Frequency-domain features, time-domain characteristics, and entropy metrics of EEG signals were analyzed. Behavioral results revealed that visual distractors significantly increased the number of commission errors, omission errors, and multipress, while reaction time showed no significant differences. These findings indicate that visual distractors negatively impact attentional stability. Analysis of EEG data demonstrated the following: (1) Visual distractors significantly prolonged P300 latency at CPz, Pz, and Oz electrode positions; (2) Significant differences in P300 peak amplitudes were observed at Fz, FCz, and Oz electrodes; (3) Both sample entropy and fuzzy entropy values in the frontal, central, and parietal regions showed significant differences between distraction and non-distraction conditions, with higher entropy values under distraction. These findings collectively indicate that visual distractors disrupt cognitive processes related to visual information integration, attentional control, and decision-making. This study deepens the understanding of the neural mechanisms of attention processing, provides new methods for optimizing attention test paradigms, offers scientific evidence for educational environment design and educational technology development, and opens new avenues for the application of neuroengineering in the field of education.
Keywords: virtual reality, Visual distractors, sustained attention, EEG, P300, entropy
Received: 15 Sep 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ai, Wang, Wang and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Suogang Wang, suogangwang@tmu.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.