The Impact of Text Anchoring Methods on Cognitive Load and User Experience in Virtual Reality

Textual information in virtual reality (VR) museums is an important source for users to understand exhibit content. The anchoring method of textual information may affect information visibility, exhibit occlusion, and visual attention allocation, thereby influencing users' cognitive load and user experience. However, there is still a lack of systematic research on how different anchoring methods affect users' information acquisition, reading processing, and experiential perception. Therefore, we compared 5 anchoring methods- attached, view-facing, pop-up, handheld, and fusion-in a VR museum, and collected behavioral performance, eye-tracking (E-T), and questionnaire data for analysis. The results showed near-ceiling accuracy across the different anchoring methods, with no significant differences in reaction time. The E-T results indicated that average saccade rate and average fixation time could reflect differences in cognitive load across anchoring methods, whereas pupil diameter showed no significant change. Subjective workload and user experience exhibited a stratification. Overall, the view-facing and handheld methods resulted in lower workload and better user experience, the fusion method performed at an intermediate level, and the attached and pop-up methods yielded higher subjective workload. These findings provide empirical evidence and design implications for selecting text anchoring methods and optimizing VR museum interfaces.