Long-term Adaptation in VR: Retention of Altered Sensorimotor Contingencies through Redirected Walking

Redirected walking (RDW) alters the relationship between physical locomotion and visual feedback to guide users along virtual paths that vary from their real-world trajectories. Over time these changes can lead to adaptation of the user and produce novel sensorimotor settings that users might retain across sessions and apply directly once they enter virtual reality (VR). Although short-term adaptation to altered sensorimotor contingencies is well established, it remains unclear whether such adaptation is retained across multiple days. We investigated long-term retention of RDW adaptation by repeatedly exposing ten participants to a fixed rightward curvature gain of π /30 across nine sessions over two weeks. Each session consisted of 200 walking repetitions with gain applied. Adaptation was assessed before and after each session using blind walking and a pointing task. Moreover, perceptual detection thresholds for curvature gains were measured before the first session (Baseline), a day after the ninth session (Final), and once in-between before the 5th adaptation session. Results showed clear retention of adapted locomotor behavior: during blind walking at the beginning of the sessions, when instructed to walk straight, participants consistently exhibited curved trajectories, which indicates that newly acquired sensorimotor contingencies can be retained over days and are immediately available upon re-entering VR. At the same time, pointing accuracy remained stable throughout the experiment and detection thresholds showed no consistent changes across sessions. In summary, our study provides evidence that adaptation to altered sensorimotor contingencies in VR can be retained across multiple sessions and days and can be available as soon as the user enters VR. This may be useful for many scenarios in which users repeatedly use VR tools over a long period of time. The complete data set, all supplemental materials and the preprint of the manuscript are available at https://osf.io/z973w.