Peak Shaving and Valley Filling: Reconstructing Cognitive Load in Cultural Heritage VR Through Contextualized Scaffolding

Abstract

Virtual reality supports immersive cultural heritage communication, yet engagement outpaces understanding. A structural cause is that information about an object is scattered across transient carriers (NPC dialogue, annotations, triggered videos), requiring working-memory integration alongside navigation and interaction, producing peaks at task overlap. We embedded an NPC Information Card System in a Foguang Temple VR game, externalizing key historical information into persistent, revisitable cards. A between-subjects experiment (N = 34) found the cards did not reduce overall cognitive load or change learning outcomes, yet significantly alleviated cybersickness, lowered effort and frustration, and enhanced perceived competence and affect. Mediation analysis revealed two pathways: cybersickness relief was a largely independent direct effect, whereas affective improvement followed a serial pathway from competence to frustration relief. Accordingly, the study proposes a peak–total dual perspective and extends the transient information effect from single-source loss to multi-source integration, offering a reconstruction-oriented alternative to reduction-based strategies.