Age-related differences in subjective and physiological emotion evoked by immersion in natural and social virtual environments.

Age-related changes in emotional processing are complex, with a bias toward positive information. However, the impact of aging on emotional responses in positive everyday situations remains unclear. Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool for investigating emotional processing, offering a unique balance between ecological validity and experimental control. Yet, limited evidence exists regarding its efficacy to elicit positive emotions in older adults. Our study aimed to explore age-related differences in positive emotional responses to immersion in both social and nonsocial virtual emotional environments. We exposed 34 younger adults and 24 older adults to natural and social 360-degree video content through a low immersive computer screen and a highly immersive Head-Mounted Display, while recording participants' physiological reactions. Participants also provided self-report of their emotions and sense of presence. The findings support VR's efficacy in eliciting positive emotions in both younger and older adults, with age-related differences in emotional responses influenced by the specific video content rather than immersion level. These findings underscore the potential of VR as a valuable tool for examining age-related differences in emotional responses and developing VR applications to enhance emotional wellbeing across diverse user populations.

Feeling Virtually Present Makes Me Happier: The Influence of Immersion, Sense of Presence, and Video Contents on Positive Emotion Induction.

Immersive technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), have great potential for enhancing users' emotions and wellbeing. However, how immersion, Virtual Environment contents, and sense of presence (SoP) influence emotional responses remains to be clarified to efficiently foster positive emotions. Consequently, a total of 26 participants (16 women, 10 men, 22.73 ± 2.69 years old) were exposed to 360-degree videos of natural and social contents on both a highly immersive Head-Mounted Display and a low immersive computer screen. Subjective emotional responses and SoP were assessed after each video using self-reports, while a wearable wristband collected continuously electrodermal activity and heart rate to record physiological emotional responses. Findings supported the added value of immersion, as more positive emotions and greater subjective arousal were reported after viewing the videos in the highly immersive setting, regardless of the video contents. In addition to usually employed natural contents, the findings also provide initial evidence for the effectiveness of social contents in eliciting positive emotions. Finally, structural equation models shed light on the indirect effect of immersion, through spatial and spatial SoP on subjective arousal. Overall, these are encouraging results about the effectiveness of VR for fostering positive emotions. Future studies should further investigate the influence of user characteristics on VR experiences to foster efficiently positive emotions among a broad range of potential users.

Age-related changes in gaze behaviour during social interaction: An eye-tracking study with an embodied conversational agent.

Previous research has highlighted age-related differences in social perception, in particular emotional expression processing. To date, such studies have largely focused on approaches that use static emotional stimuli that the participant has to identify passively without the possibility of any interaction. In this study, we propose an interactive virtual environment to better address age-related variations in social and emotional perception. A group of 22 young (18-30 years) and 20 older (60-80 years) adults were engaged in a face-to-face conversation with an embodied conversational agent. Participants were invited to interact naturally with the agent and to identify his facial expression. Their gaze behaviour was captured by an eye-tracking device throughout the interaction. We also explored whether the Big Five personality traits (particularly extraversion) and anxiety modulated gaze during the social interaction. Findings suggested that age-related differences in gaze behaviour were only apparent when decoding social signals (i.e., listening to a partner's question, identifying facial expressions) and not when communicating social information (i.e., when speaking). Furthermore, higher extraversion levels consistently led to a shorter amount of time gazing towards the eyes, whereas higher anxiety levels led to slight modulations of gaze only when participants were listening to questions. Face-to-face conversation with virtual agents can provide a more naturalistic framework for the assessment of online socio-emotional interaction in older adults, which is not easily observable in classical offline paradigms. This study provides novel and important insights into the specific circumstances in which older adults may experience difficulties in social interactions.