A primary affordance of virtual reality (VR) headsets is to give the user spatial presence or the illusion of being in the virtual environment. Although considerable research connects VR to spatial presence, spatial awareness, and spatial ability, little is known about how users develop spatial presence in VR learning environments. This study addresses that gap by exploring spatial presence experience construction in a VR educational game and investigating whether users’ knowledge, game experience, and VR experience impact the establishment of spatial presence. In this study, 56 high school students played an immersive 3D VR cell biology game where players search for clues within a virtual cell to diagnose the cell. Findings suggest that players’ perceptions of spatial presence are linked to how they allocate their attention during the game, their level of interest in cellular biology, and their visual-spatial acuity, but are not linked to their game experience, VR experience, or prior knowledge of the content area. These results indicate that well-scaffolded, engaging virtual environments can foster spatial presence among users, regardless of prior knowledge or experience, and gives practitioners clues about how to design VR learning environments.

虚拟现实（VR）头戴式耳机的主要功能是给用户提供空间上的存在感或进入虚拟环境的错觉。尽管大量研究将VR与空间存在，空间意识和空间能力联系起来，但对于用户如何在VR学习环境中发展空间存在知之甚少。这项研究通过探索VR教育游戏中的空间呈现体验构建并调查用户的知识，游戏体验和VR体验是否影响空间呈现的建立来解决这一差距。在这项研究中，有56名高中学生玩了一个沉浸式3D VR细胞生物学游戏，玩家可以在虚拟细胞中搜索线索以诊断该细胞。研究结果表明，玩家对空间存在感的感知与他们在游戏中如何分配注意力有关，他们对细胞生物学的兴趣水平以及他们的视觉空间敏锐度，但与他们的游戏体验，VR体验或内容领域的先验知识无关。这些结果表明，构架精良，引人入胜的虚拟环境可以促进用户之间的空间存在感，而不论先前的知识或经验如何，并为从业人员提供有关如何设计VR学习环境的线索。