From 65 to 103, Older Adults Experience Virtual Reality Differently Depending on Their Age: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Study in Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Facilities.

There is growing interest in applications of virtual reality (VR) to improve the lives of older adults, but the limited research on older adults and VR largely treats older adults as a monolith, ignoring the substantial differences across 65 to 100+ year olds that may affect their experience of VR. There are also few existing studies examining the experiences and challenges facing those who facilitate VR for older adults (e.g., caregiving staff). We address these limitations through two studies. In study 1, we explore variation within older adults' experiences with VR through a field study of VR use among a large (N = 245) and age-diverse (Mage = 83.6 years, SDage = 7.9, range = 65-103 years) sample of nursing home and assisted living facility residents across 10 U.S. states. Age was negatively associated with the extent to which older adults enjoyed VR experiences. However, the negative relationship between age and older adults' attitudes toward VR was significantly less negative than the relationship between age and their attitudes toward other technologies (cell phones and voice assistants). In study 2, we surveyed caregiving staff (N = 39) who facilitated the VR experiences for older adult residents and found that the caregiving staff generally enjoyed the activity relative to other activities and felt it to be beneficial to their relationship with residents.

Exploring the Relationship Between Attribute Discrepancy and Avatar Embodiment in Immersive Social Virtual Reality.

Social virtual reality (VR) is an emerging set of platforms where users interact while embodying avatars. Given that VR headsets track real physical movements and map them onto one's avatar body, the nature of one's digital representation is an important aspect of social VR. However, little is known about how the visual proximity of an avatar to the self shapes user experience in naturalistic, social VR environments. In this article, we use this context to explore how embodiment is influenced by the perceived differences between the physical attributes of a user and the virtual attributes of their avatar. We selected a number of attributes for this measure that have been shown to be important for customization and representation in VR. Participants created an avatar, spent time in social VR, and reported on their experience in a questionnaire. Our results demonstrate a significant negative association between attribute discrepancy and avatar embodiment, the psychological experience of one's virtual body as their own body. We discuss implications for theories of self-representation and suggest urgency on the part of games and VR designers to improve the methods of creating avatars.

Facial Appearance Dissatisfaction Explains Differences in Zoom Fatigue.

Viewing self-video during videoconferences potentially causes negative self-focused attention that contributes to virtual meeting (VM) or "Zoom" fatigue. The present research examines this proposition, focusing on facial dissatisfaction-feeling unhappy about one's own facial appearance-as a potential psychological mechanism of VM fatigue. A study of survey responses from a panel of 613 adults found that VM fatigue was 14.9 percent higher for women than for men, and 11.1 percent higher for Asian than for White participants. These gender and race/ethnicity differences were found to be mediated by facial dissatisfaction. This study replicates earlier VM fatigue research, extends the theoretical understanding of facial dissatisfaction as a psychological mechanism of VM fatigue, and suggests that practical approaches to mitigating VM fatigue could include implementing technological features that reduce self-focused attention during VMs (e.g., employing avatars).

Virtual reality and the psychology of climate change.

Researchers and practitioners have used virtual reality (VR) as a tool to understand attitudes and behaviors around climate change for decades. As VR has become more immersive, mainstream, and commercially available, it has also become a medium for education about climate issues, a way to indirectly expose users to novel stimuli, and a tool to tell stories about antienvironmental activity. This review explicates the relationship between VR and climate change from a psychological perspective and offers recommendations to make virtual experiences engaging, available, and impactful for users. Climate change is perhaps the most urgent global issue of our lifetime with irreversible consequences. It therefore requires innovative experiential approaches to teach its effects and modify attitudes in support of proenvironmental actions.

The effect of water immersion on vection in virtual reality.

Research about vection (illusory self-motion) has investigated a wide range of sensory cues and employed various methods and equipment, including use of virtual reality (VR). However, there is currently no research in the field of vection on the impact of floating in water while experiencing VR. Aquatic immersion presents a new and interesting method to potentially enhance vection by reducing conflicting sensory information that is usually experienced when standing or sitting on a stable surface. This study compares vection, visually induced motion sickness, and presence among participants experiencing VR while standing on the ground or floating in water. Results show that vection was significantly enhanced for the participants in the Water condition, whose judgments of self-displacement were larger than those of participants in the Ground condition. No differences in visually induced motion sickness or presence were found between conditions. We discuss the implication of this new type of VR experience for the fields of VR and vection while also discussing future research questions that emerge from our findings.

The future is now: Age-progressed images motivate community college students to prepare for their financial futures.

Part of the challenge young people face when preparing for lifelong financial security is visualizing the far-off future. Age-progression technology has been shown to motivate young people to save for retirement. The current study applied age progression for motivating socioeconomically diverse community college students as part of a college planning course. We recruited 106 students enrolled in a mandatory "Transitioning to College" course and randomly assigned them to view age-progressed or same-aged digital avatars. Compared to controls, age-progressed participants gave more correct answers and exhibited higher confidence (i.e., fewer "don't know" responses) on a financial literacy test. Confidence mediated the effect of age progression on correct responses, but not the other way around, pointing to financial confidence as a precursor to effective financial education. Students also reported interest in attending more long-term financial planning workshops (e.g., investing and retirement) available through their college. No differences were observed in financial planning for the near term (e.g., student aid and credit cards). The current study demonstrates the viability of age progression as a practical, inexpensive, and scalable intervention. Findings also illustrate the significance of this intervention for reducing pervasive socioeconomic and age disparities in financial knowledge and enhancing long-term financial prospects across future generations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Personal identifiability of user tracking data during observation of 360-degree VR video.

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that is gaining traction in the consumer market. With it comes an unprecedented ability to track body motions. These body motions are diagnostic of personal identity, medical conditions, and mental states. Previous work has focused on the identifiability of body motions in idealized situations in which some action is chosen by the study designer. In contrast, our work tests the identifiability of users under typical VR viewing circumstances, with no specially designed identifying task. Out of a pool of 511 participants, the system identifies 95% of users correctly when trained on less than 5 min of tracking data per person. We argue these results show nonverbal data should be understood by the public and by researchers as personally identifying data.

Cultivating Empathy Through Virtual Reality: Advancing Conversations About Racism, Inequity, and Climate in Medicine.

PROBLEM: Racism and bias are fundamental causes of health inequities, and they negatively affect the climate of academic medical institutions across the United States. APPROACH: In 2019, the Zucker School of Medicine and Northwell Health piloted a virtual reality (VR) racism experience as a component of professional development for medical school and health system leaders, faculty, and staff. Participants experienced a 60-minute, interactive, large-group session on microaggressions and, as individuals, a 20-minute VR module. These were followed by group reflection and debriefing. The sessions, developed in collaboration with a VR academic team, represented a response to institutional climate assessment surveys, which indicated the need for expanded professional training on cross-cultural communication and enhancing inclusion. OUTCOMES: In October 2019, 112 faculty and staff participated in the workshop. On a postworkshop survey, completed by 76 participants (67.9%), most respondents (90.8%) reported feeling engaged in the VR experience. Additionally, the majority agreed that VR was an effective tool for enhancing empathy (94.7%), that the session enhanced their own empathy for racial minorities (85.5%), and that their approach to communication would change (67.1%). In open-ended responses, participants frequently conveyed enthusiasm, powerful emotional and physiologic responses, and enhanced empathy. They also suggested more time for follow-up discussions. NEXT STEPS: Next steps include assessing the scalability of the VR module; determining effective complementary engagements; and measuring the module's longitudinal effects on racial empathy, discrimination, and institutional climate. As VR becomes more common in medical education, developing VR modules to address other forms of discrimination (e.g., sexism, homophobia) could also benefit the institutional climates of medical schools and health systems as academic medicine continues to build toward health equity.

Psychological and physiological effects of applying self-control to the mobile phone.

This preregistered study examined the psychological and physiological consequences of exercising self-control with the mobile phone. A total of 125 participants were randomly assigned to sit in an unadorned room for six minutes and either (a) use their mobile phone, (b) sit alone with no phone, or (c) sit with their device but resist using it. Consistent with prior work, participants self-reported more concentration difficulty and more mind wandering with no device present compared to using the phone. Resisting the phone led to greater perceived concentration abilities than sitting without the device (not having external stimulation). Failing to replicate prior work, however, participants without external stimulation did not rate the experience as less enjoyable or more boring than having something to do. We also observed that skin conductance data were consistent across conditions for the first three-minutes of the experiment, after which participants who resisted the phone were less aroused than those who were without the phone. We discuss how the findings contribute to our understanding of exercising self-control with mobile media and how psychological consequences, such as increased mind wandering and focusing challenges, relate to periods of idleness or free thinking.

Social interaction in augmented reality.

There have been decades of research on the usability and educational value of augmented reality. However, less is known about how augmented reality affects social interactions. The current paper presents three studies that test the social psychological effects of augmented reality. Study 1 examined participants' task performance in the presence of embodied agents and replicated the typical pattern of social facilitation and inhibition. Participants performed a simple task better, but a hard task worse, in the presence of an agent compared to when participants complete the tasks alone. Study 2 examined nonverbal behavior. Participants met an agent sitting in one of two chairs and were asked to choose one of the chairs to sit on. Participants wearing the headset never sat directly on the agent when given the choice of two seats, and while approaching, most of the participants chose the rotation direction to avoid turning their heads away from the agent. A separate group of participants chose a seat after removing the augmented reality headset, and the majority still avoided the seat previously occupied by the agent. Study 3 examined the social costs of using an augmented reality headset with others who are not using a headset. Participants talked in dyads, and augmented reality users reported less social connection to their partner compared to those not using augmented reality. Overall, these studies provide evidence suggesting that task performance, nonverbal behavior, and social connectedness are significantly affected by the presence or absence of virtual content.

A Systematic Review of Social Presence: Definition, Antecedents, and Implications.

Social presence, or the feeling of being there with a "real" person, is a crucial component of interactions that take place in virtual reality. This paper reviews the concept, antecedents, and implications of social presence, with a focus on the literature regarding the predictors of social presence. The article begins by exploring the concept of social presence, distinguishing it from two other dimensions of presence-telepresence and self-presence. After establishing the definition of social presence, the article offers a systematic review of 233 separate findings identified from 152 studies that investigate the factors (i.e., immersive qualities, contextual differences, and individual psychological traits) that predict social presence. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of heightened social presence and when it does and does not enhance one's experience in a virtual environment.

Immersive Virtual Reality Field Trips Facilitate Learning About Climate Change.

Across four studies, two controlled lab experiments and two field studies, we tested the efficacy of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) as an education medium for teaching the consequences of climate change, particularly ocean acidification. Over 270 participants from four different learning settings experienced an immersive underwater world designed to show the process and effects of rising sea water acidity. In all of our investigations, after experiencing immersive VR people demonstrated knowledge gains or inquisitiveness about climate science and in some cases, displayed more positive attitudes toward the environment after comparing pre- and post-test assessments. The analyses also revealed a potential post-hoc mechanism for the learning effects, as the more that people explored the spatial learning environment, the more they demonstrated a change in knowledge about ocean acidification. This work is unique by showing distinct learning gains or an interest in learning across a variety of participants (high school, college students, adults), measures (learning gain scores, tracking data about movement in the virtual world, qualitative responses from classroom teachers), and content (multiple versions varying in length and content about climate change were tested). Our findings explicate the opportunity to use immersive VR for environmental education and to drive information-seeking about important social issues such as climate change.

The unbearable likeness of being digital: the persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments.

Every day, millions of users interact in real-time via avatars in online environments, such as massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). These online environments could potentially be unique research platforms for the social sciences and clinical therapy, but it is crucial to first establish that social behavior and norms in virtual environments are comparable to those in the physical world. In an observational study of Second Life, a virtual community, we collected data from avatars in order to explore whether social norms of gender, interpersonal distance (IPD), and eye gaze transfer into virtual environments even though the modality of movement is entirely different (i.e., via keyboard and mouse as opposed to eyes and legs). Our results showed that established findings of IPD and eye gaze transfer into virtual environments: (1) male-male dyads have larger IPDs than female-female dyads, (2) male-male dyads maintain less eye contact than female-female dyads, and (3) decreases in IPD are compensated with gaze avoidance as predicted by the Equilibrium Theory. We discuss implications for users of online games as well as for social scientists who seek to conduct research in virtual environments.

A Public Database of Immersive VR Videos with Corresponding Ratings of Arousal, Valence, and Correlations between Head Movements and Self Report Measures.

Virtual reality (VR) has been proposed as a methodological tool to study the basic science of psychology and other fields. One key advantage of VR is that sharing of virtual content can lead to more robust replication and representative sampling. A database of standardized content will help fulfill this vision. There are two objectives to this study. First, we seek to establish and allow public access to a database of immersive VR video clips that can act as a potential resource for studies on emotion induction using virtual reality. Second, given the large sample size of participants needed to get reliable valence and arousal ratings for our video, we were able to explore the possible links between the head movements of the observer and the emotions he or she feels while viewing immersive VR. To accomplish our goals, we sourced for and tested 73 immersive VR clips which participants rated on valence and arousal dimensions using self-assessment manikins. We also tracked participants' rotational head movements as they watched the clips, allowing us to correlate head movements and affect. Based on past research, we predicted relationships between the standard deviation of head yaw and valence and arousal ratings. Results showed that the stimuli varied reasonably well along the dimensions of valence and arousal, with a slight underrepresentation of clips that are of negative valence and highly arousing. The standard deviation of yaw positively correlated with valence, while a significant positive relationship was found between head pitch and arousal. The immersive VR clips tested are available online as supplemental material.

Identifying Anxiety Through Tracked Head Movements in a Virtual Classroom.

Virtual reality allows the controlled simulation of complex social settings, such as classrooms, and thus provides an opportunity to test a range of theories in the social sciences in a way that is both naturalistic and controlled. Importantly, virtual environments also allow the body movements of participants in the virtual world to be tracked and recorded. In the following article, we discuss how tracked head movements were correlated with participants' reports of anxiety in a simulation of a classroom. Participants who reported a high sense of awareness of and concern about the other virtual people in the room showed different patterns of head movement (more lateral head movement, indicating scanning behavior) from those who reported a low level of concern. We discuss the implications of this research for understanding nonverbal behavior associated with anxiety and for the design of online educational systems.

Prospective representation of navigational goals in the human hippocampus.

Mental representation of the future is a fundamental component of goal-directed behavior. Computational and animal models highlight prospective spatial coding in the hippocampus, mediated by interactions with the prefrontal cortex, as a putative mechanism for simulating future events. Using whole-brain high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging and multi-voxel pattern classification, we tested whether the human hippocampus and interrelated cortical structures support prospective representation of navigational goals. Results demonstrated that hippocampal activity patterns code for future goals to which participants subsequently navigate, as well as for intervening locations along the route, consistent with trajectory-specific simulation. The strength of hippocampal goal representations covaried with goal-related coding in the prefrontal, medial temporal, and medial parietal cortex. Collectively, these data indicate that a hippocampal-cortical network supports prospective simulation of navigational events during goal-directed planning.

A bird's eye view: biological categorization and reasoning within and across cultures.

Many psychological studies of categorization and reasoning use undergraduates to make claims about human conceptualization. Generalizability of findings to other populations is often assumed but rarely tested. Even when comparative studies are conducted, it may be challenging to interpret differences. As a partial remedy, in the present studies we adopt a 'triangulation strategy' to evaluate the ways expertise and culturally different belief systems can lead to different ways of conceptualizing the biological world. We use three groups (US bird experts, US undergraduates, and ordinary Itza' Maya) and two sets of birds (North American and Central American). Categorization tasks show considerable similarity among the three groups' taxonomic sorts, but also systematic differences. Notably, US expert categorization is more similar to Itza' than to US novice categorization. The differences are magnified on inductive reasoning tasks where only undergraduates show patterns of judgment that are largely consistent with current models of category-based taxonomic inference. The Maya commonly employ causal and ecological reasoning rather than taxonomic reasoning. Experts use a mixture of strategies (including causal and ecological reasoning), only some of which current models explain. US and Itza' informants differed markedly when reasoning about passerines (songbirds), reflecting the somewhat different role that songbirds play in the two cultures. The results call into question the importance of similarity-based notions of typicality and central tendency in natural categorization and reasoning. These findings also show that relative expertise leads to a convergence of thought that transcends cultural boundaries and shared experiences.

Interpersonal distance in immersive virtual environments.

Digital immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) enables behavioral scientists to conduct ecologically realistic experiments with near-perfect experimental control. The authors employed IVET to study the interpersonal distance maintained between participants and virtual humans. In Study 1, participants traversed a three-dimensional virtual room in which a virtual human stood. In Study 2, a virtual human approached participants. In both studies, participant gender, virtual human gender, virtual human gaze behavior, and whether virtual humans were allegedly controlled by humans (i.e., avatars) or computers (i.e., agents) were varied. Results indicated that participants maintained greater distance from virtual humans when approaching their fronts compared to their backs. In addition, participants gave more personal space to virtual agents who engaged them in mutual gaze. Moreover, when virtual humans invaded their personal space, participants moved farthest from virtual human agents. The advantages and disadvantages of IVET for the study of human behavior are discussed.