Evaluating the Effect of the Color-Word Stroop Test and VR as a Psychological Stressor

Virtual Reality (VR) makes use of psychological stressors to enable users to feel immersed in different domains. Although stressor tests, like the Color-Word Stroop Test (CWST), have been shown to be valid and reliable, there are limited deployments of such stressors that exhibit appropriate immersion and user experience in VR. In this paper, we present the development and evaluation of two VR simulators of the CWST. We conducted a between-subjects study with 27 participants who completed the conventional CWST, a VR-only simulator of the CWST, and a gamified VR simulator of the CWST. We measured and conducted a statistical analysis of participants' CWST scores, perceived stress, immersion, user experience, playability, and heart rate. Our results show that there are no significant differences in using the two CWST simulators of the VR. We found that users' heart rate is significantly higher when using the VR simulators than the conventional CWST and that the VR game simulator significantly shows a higher score in immersion than the VR-only simulator. However, users' perceived stress was significantly less when using the VR game simulator. Finally, we reflect on design insights for stressors tests in VR and discuss directions for future work.