SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2025.1589256
Human Task Performance and Associated Internal States in Extended Reality: A Systematic Review of Cognitive, Psychophysiological, and Physiological Dimensions
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Computer Science, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA 30060, United States
- 2Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, United States
- 3Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, 16801, United States
- 4Department of Software Engineering and Game Design and Development, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA 30060, United States
- 5Department of Psychological Science, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA 30060, United States
- 6Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, United States
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Human task performance in extended reality (XR) environments is a critical area of study due to the growing use of these technologies in fields such as healthcare, education, manufacturing, and training, as XR has the potential to influence both how well people complete tasks (e.g., accuracy, speed) and underlying human states such as cognitive load, stress, and physiological responses. A plethora of research has explored the benefits of XR across these domains, as well as research to investigate potential negative impacts on cognition and task performance. However, the findings regarding task performance remain inconclusive, and the factors contributing to enhanced versus diminished performance are poorly defined. In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review of 79 research papers from 2015–2024, following the PRISMA guidelines, selected from an initial pool of 6,878 search results from the Publish or Perish database Harzing (2007). Our review reveals that a key gap exists in understanding how specific XR factors, such as immersion levels, interaction modalities, and user interface design, influence both task performance and associated cognitive, psychophysiological, and physiological outcomes. We also report how these different factors influence the performance of cognitive, psychophysiological, and physiological tasks in different XR environments. We conclude by proposing potential research gaps and future research directions to focus on controlled experimental studies targeting these factors to gain deeper insights into their impact on human performance in XR settings.
Keywords: Extended Reality, Human task performance, psychomotor tasks, virtual reality, augmented reality, Mixed reality
Received: 07 Mar 2025; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ahmed, Wu, Huang, Jung, Rheem, Tan, Imani and Islam. 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: Nasim Ahmed, nasim.cse2k17@gmail.com
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