Augmented Reality in Determining the Cognitive Load of Blind Users During Navigation Process

Abstract

Augmented Reality Mobile Applications were developed to help blind users navigate unfamiliar spaces and to determine their cognitive load during that task. The present study compared two navigation configurations: guided and unguided, to assess the differences in cognitive load in blind adults to perform a secondary auditory task during navigation. A 4.3% increase in cognitive load was found for participants using the unguided configuration. The evidence supports improvements in efficiency for guided configuration, with a 53.07% reduction in navigation time compared to unguided configuration (p-value = 0.028). Effectiveness also achieved 21.4% more successes with the guided configuration. Deferred memories were 38.3% higher among blind participants who used the guided configuration (p value = 0.006).