BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2025.1610627
Visual Attention and Cognitive Effects of Facial Anonymization in 360°Videos
Provisionally accepted
- 1The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Japan
- 2National Institute of Informatics, Chiyoda-ku, Tôkyô, Japan
- 3Institute of Science Tokyo, Meguro, Tokyo, Japan
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We analyze perceptual effects of facial anonymization in 360° videos to understand how different anonymization technologies affect the attention and cognition of viewers. 360° videos provide highly immersive viewing experiences, making them ideal for the exploration of real world scenes. As videos of public locations generally include bystanders, it is necessary to apply facial anonymization to protect their privacy. However, this changes the visual content and might affect the attention and cognition of viewers. To investigate these effects, we perform an experiment in which participants watch 360° videos while we collect their eye tracking data. Additionally, we prepare questionnaires measuring presence, video quality, and memory of participants. Our results show differences in visual attention and the perceived video quality between anonymization techniques highlighting that it is important to consider the chosen facial anonymization technique.
Keywords: Facial Anonymization, Face-Swapping, Visual Perception, virtual reality, 360°video, Deepfake
Received: 12 Apr 2025; Accepted: 07 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wöhler, Ikehata and Aizawa. 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: Leslie Wöhler, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Japan
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