Attentional Organisation in Large-FOV Immersive Environments:
Effects of Narration Language
Research & InsightIn collaboration with Dr. Habil Tamas Bokor and Neuro- and Digital Marketing Research Center,
Corvinus University of Budapest
We explored how narration language affects attention and cognitive load in an immersive dome environment. The pilot study compared Hungarian and English narration while participants watched the same audiovisual content. Using mobile eye tracking and short self-reports, we looked at how language influences attention, perceived effort and the way people experience immersive content.
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Immersive environments create a very different viewing experience from conventional screens. When visuals surround the viewer, it can be harder to decide where to focus and how to process visual and verbal information at the same time.
This raises an important question for immersive learning and communication: when does narration help people follow and understand what they see, and when does it become an additional distraction?
Cognitive Load Theory tells us that our working memory has a limited capacity for processing information. We know quite a lot about how people deal with complex information on conventional screens, but much less about what happens in large-FOV immersive environments.
We wanted to explore whether the language of narration could influence how people organise their attention when experiencing the same immersive visual content.
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We designed a pilot study in a fixed dome environment using a 2–3 minute excerpt from an existing immersive audiovisual piece. The visual content was identical for everyone. The only difference was the narration: participants heard the same content either in Hungarian or in English.
Up to 20 Hungarian university students with B2/C1 English proficiency took part in the study and were randomly assigned to the two groups.
We used Tobii Glasses Pro 2 mobile eye tracking to follow where and how participants looked during the experience. We looked at patterns such as how widely their attention was distributed, how often their gaze moved and how they searched the visual field.
We also asked participants about their perceived effort and whether they found the narration helpful or distracting.
By combining these different types of data, we wanted to see whether native-language narration makes it easier to organise attention and process the immersive content.
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The project brought together an immersive audiovisual experience and a simple experimental setup that allowed us to change one element while keeping everything else the same.
Instead of changing the visuals, we changed only the language of the narration. This gave us a clear way to compare how people responded to identical content in different linguistic conditions.
The study also connected Cognitive Load Theory with mobile eye tracking, allowing us to look beyond what participants said about the experience and examine how their attention actually moved through the immersive environment.
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The research aims to provide practical insights for designing narration in immersive learning, communication and storytelling.
Understanding how verbal guidance affects attention can help creators decide when narration supports an immersive experience and when it may overload the viewer.
More broadly, the study explores how principles developed for traditional screens can be adapted to new immersive environments, where the relationship between visual information, language and attention is fundamentally different.