Social media platforms use short, highly engaging videos to catch users’ attention. While the short-form video feeds popularized by TikTok are rapidly spreading to other platforms, we do not yet understand their impact on cognitive functions. We conducted a between-subjects experiment (N = 60) investigating the impact of engaging with TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube while performing a Prospective Memory task (i.e., executing a previously planned action). The study required participants to remember intentions over interruptions. We found that the TikTok condition significantly degraded the users’ performance in this task. As none of the other conditions (Twitter, YouTube, no activity) had a similar effect, our results indicate that the combination of short videos and rapid context-switching impairs intention recall and execution. We contribute a quantified understanding of the effect of social media feed format on Prospective Memory and outline consequences for media technology designers to not harm the users’ memory and wellbeing.

Biocybernetic loops encompass users' state detection and system adaptation based on physiological signals. Current adaptive systems limit the adaptation to task features such as task difficulty or multitasking demands. However, virtual reality allows the manipulation of task-irrelevant elements in the environment. We present a physiologically adaptive system that adjusts the virtual environment based on physiological arousal, i.e., electrodermal activity. We conducted a user study with our adaptive system in social virtual reality to verify improved performance. Here, participants completed an n-back task, and we adapted the visual complexity of the environment by changing the number of non-player characters. Our results show that an adaptive virtual reality can control users' comfort, performance, and workload by adapting the visual complexity based on physiological arousal. Thus, our physiologically adaptive system improves task performance and perceived workload. Finally, we embed our findings in physiological computing and discuss applications in various scenarios.

Virtual reality is increasingly used for tasks such as work and education. Thus, rendering scenarios that do not interfere with such goals and deplete user experience are becoming progressively more relevant. We present a physiologically adaptive system that optimizes the virtual environment based on physiological arousal, i.e., electrodermal activity. We investigated the usability of the adaptive system in a simulated social virtual reality scenario. Participants completed an n-back task (primary) and a visual detection (secondary) task. Here, we adapted the visual complexity of the secondary task in the form of the number of non-player characters of the secondary task to accomplish the primary task. We show that an adaptive virtual reality can improve users’ comfort by adapting to physiological arousal regarding the task complexity. Our findings suggest that physiologically adaptive virtual reality systems can improve users’ experience in a wide range of scenarios.

Social games benefit from social connectedness between players because it improves the gaming experience and increases enjoyment. In virtual reality (VR), various approaches, such as avatars, are developed for multi-player games to increase social connectedness. However, these approaches are lacking in single-player games. To increase social connectedness in such games, our work explores the visualization of physiological data from asynchronous players, i.e., electrocardiogram (ECG). We identified two visualization dimensions, the number of players, and the visualization style, after a design workshop with experts (N=4) and explored them in a single-user virtual escape room game. We spatially and temporally integrated the visualizations and compared two times two visualizations against a baseline condition without visualization in a within-subject lab study (N=34). All but one visualization significantly increased participants’ feelings of social connectedness. Heart icons triggered the strongest feeling of connectedness, understanding, and perceived support in playing the game.