Assessing the Impact of Visual and Auditory Perspectives on Performance and Pseudo-Haptics in a Virtual Drilling Task

Psychomotor skill development has been neglected in immersive virtual learning environments (iVLEs) due to the difficulties in simulating the sense of touch (haptics). Although pseudo-haptics that uses multi-modal interaction to simulate the sense of touch without relying on costly and inaccessible haptic devices, has emerged as a promising field, research has often overlooked the importance of embodiment, the sense of being present and controlling a body, with respect to pseudo-haptics. In this work-in-progress paper, we propose an experiment that examines the interplay between visual and auditory perspectives and their effect on haptic perception via pseudo-haptics and on psychomotor performance in a virtual reality drilling task. We aim to bridge the gap in in virtual-based psychomotor skill training research by providing valuable insights into the role of embodiment and pseudo-haptics in enhancing simulation-based training, particularly in scenarios where access to high-fidelity haptic devices is limited.