The flowchart of experimental procedure.
Created with Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite. Time spent in each step is listed under the block, and all the physiological and cognitive assessment data collected are highlighted by bold characters.In each environment, participants started with a 3-minute rest, i.e., seated in a gray and empty classroom in VR, which allowed their physiological conditions to stabilize and the baseline measurements of physiological indicators to be recorded. Afterwards, participants were exposed to one virtual classroom environment in VR for 3 minutes and allowed to walk and observe the environment freely during the period. Then, without taking off the goggles, the participants were asked to report their current stress level, followed by taking two cognitive tests verbally, which lasted for about 5 minutes. The same procedure was repeated for the other four environments, starting with the 3-minute quiet sitting in the simulated empty classroom which now served as a blanking process to minimize the lingering effect from the previous environment.After exposure to all five environments, equipment was removed from participants, then they received a 2-minute online check-out survey (