Multilayered Affect-Audio Research System for Virtual Reality Learning Environments

How does sound impact learners' emotions? This is an important question because emotion plays an important role in learning. Research shows that confusion, frustration, boredom, engagement and interest are emotions experienced during complex learning [11][15].Work in this area found that visual and audio materials can elicit emotions that influence the attention of learners [36]. In the current work, we focus on learner's affect and sound design for virtual reality learning environments and present the design of the Multilayered Affect-Audio Research System, MAARS.We describe the sound design workflow, affective sound design heuristics, the audio presentation system and each of the operational components. The goal is to have a system that enables the rapid creation of auditory experimental conditions in VR in order to accelerate the research in this area and to help answer the question of how sound and its designs impact learners' affective states and cognitive performance in virtual reality learning environments.