Virtual reality (VR) for language processing and learning: Methods and approaches

Virtual reality (VR) is a transformative technology for studying language processing and learning. It offers realistic and naturalistic environments while maintaining experimental control, supporting the exploration of social and sensorimotor cues that have often been overlooked in traditional psycholinguistic research. It can also be integrated with behavioral and neurocognitive measures to examine how learning processes influence learning outcomes. These VR characteristics have brought new opportunities and contributed to the expansion of theoretical frameworks on language processing and learning. Through reviewing recent empirical findings, we establish VR as a novel methodology for investigating how embodied and social experiences shape language processing and learning. We emphasize that realizing this potential fully requires real-time multimodal tracking of learning processes, systematic examination of individual differences and development of richer virtual environments and VR-suitable assessment tasks. This review provides methodological insights for future VR research on the neurocognitive bases of language processing and learning.