Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) technology has an extensive application prosperity in many fields. However, the effects on the brain cognitive function is still unclear. Both plane and VR visual task is designed in this paper，and EEG signals were acquired synchronously. Then the influence of virtual reality on event-related potentials (ERP) were studied by contrast analysis. The selection of reference electrode is the key to the research of ERP. The reference electrode standardization technique can make the EEG information more objective by transferring the reference of EEG at infinity. After that the ERP was extracted by coherence average. The results showed that, compared to plane mode, there is no significant P300 component in ERP under VR mode, which may be related to brain fatigue. Furthermore, the latency of the N100 component shortened and its amplitude increased, which reflect that the VR environment is more likely to attract attention and create an immersive environment.