Research on multimodal interaction system based on cognitive style in virtual historical and cultural scenes

Virtual reality (VR) technology holds vast prospects, particularly in the domain of historical and cultural heritage. Studies have shown efficiency differences in knowledge acquisition among users with different cognitive styles. How to bridge the cognitive disparities between users with different cognitive styles in VR environments and create universally accessible experiences presents a novel challenge for the design of virtual historical and cultural scenes. Therefore, this paper proposes a multimodal interaction system to create more universally accessible virtual cultural scene experiences, enhancing the experience through the addition of visual guidance and haptic feedback. An experiment involving 48 participants was conducted to examine whether the multimodal interaction system can narrow the differences in cognitive efficiency among users with different cognitive styles. The experimental results demonstrate that introducing this multimodal interaction system into virtual historical and cultural scenes significantly impacts the involvement and learning efficiency of both field-dependent and field-independent cognitive style users. Regarding presence, the system provides a better experience for both cognitive style users in terms of involvement. In terms of learning efficiency, the system enhances the learning efficiency of both cognitive style users and narrows the gap in their cognitive efficiency. In conclusion, these findings provide important guidance for the design of virtual historical and cultural scenes.