ABSTRACT. In this article, previous research findings were cumulated, indicating that metaverse and immersive technologies, intelligent connectivity infrastructures, and decision support and digital twin modeling tools are pivotal in interactive digital worlds. The contribution to the literature on digital hyper-realistic worlds developing on data mining and synthetic data generation techniques, virtual simulation and deep learning algorithms, and natural language processing and synthetic data tools is by showing that immersive digital worlds require behavior modeling and spatial computing technologies, 3D image processing and computer vision algorithms, and empathetic computing and immersive visualization systems. Throughout April 2022, a quantitative literature review of the Web of Science, Scopus, and ProQuest databases was performed, with search terms including “the virtual environment of the metaverse” + “machine learning-based decision support and socially-extended cognition systems,” “affective and perceptual technologies,” and “spatio-temporal fusion and visual tracking algorithms.”As research published in 2022 was inspected, only 146 articles satisfied the eligibility criteria, and 28 sources were selected. Data visualization tools: Dimensions (bibliometric mapping) and VOSviewer (layout algorithms). Reporting quality assessment tool: PRISMA. Methodological quality assessment tools include: AXIS, Dedoose, ROBIS, and SRDR.

Keywords: machine learning; decision support; cognition; affective; perceptual spatio-temporal; visual tracking; virtual; metaverse

How to cite: Zvarikova, K., Cug, J., and Sullivan, R. (2022). “Machine Learning-based Decision Support and Socially-Extended Cognition Systems, Affective and Perceptual Technologies, and Spatio-Temporal Fusion and Visual Tracking Algorithms in the Virtual Environment of the Metaverse,” Smart Governance 1(2): 71–86. doi: 10.22381/sg1220225.

Received 22 May 2022 • Received in revised form 23 June 2022
Accepted 28 June 2022 • Available online 30 June 2022