Children's Memory of Story and Emotional Content Experienced in Virtual Reality and Traditional Media

• In Event: 1-054 - Emerging Perspectives on Cognitive and Social Development in Virtual Spaces

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET) is a visual multi-sensory computer-simulated environment that perceptually surrounds an individual, creating the illusion that one has “stepped inside” and is included in, and interacting with the generated world. While IVET has been suggested as a learning tool (e.g., Bailey & Bailenson), current work has not examined how IVET presentations, compared with other types of media, facilitate or interfere with young children’s memory formation or recall. Here, we present data from a study of 6- to 8-year-old children’s memory of narrative and emotional content presented via IVET, video, and storybook.

Methods (Figure 1) and Participant Sample:
Sixty 6- to 8-year-old children (Mean age = 7.0 years, SD = 6.2) were randomly assigned to be presented with a story in one of these modalities: IVET, Video (2D), or Book. We used a publically available VR story called “Henry the Hedgehog”. The 2D-video used the same content as the VR presentation but was presented on a standard monitor. The book was created using screen shots of each key scene in the story with the narrator’s comments added in as text. After the story was presented to the child, we assessed how condition affected their recall of the story narrative and their identification and intensity ratings of the emotions present in the story.

Hypotheses:
Our overall hypothesis was that performance would be best for content presented via IVET because the immersive nature of the delivery would minimise distractions during encoding and provide a more engaging experience. More specifically, we hypothesised that children in the IVET condition would make the fewest memory errors at test and would represent the emotions felt by the characters as being more intense than children in the other two conditions.

Results (See Figure 2):
Children in the IVET condition made fewer errors in the memory recall task than the children in the Video and Book conditions (p < .01). The most pronounced difference among conditions was between IVET and Book (p < .005). Age may also have been a factor, with 7-year-olds out-performing 6-year-olds in the memory task in the book and video conditions, but not in the VR condition. It may also be that children using digital media (IVET or video) ranked character emotions as more intense than those using the book presentation (p = .06).

Conclusions:
The advantages for children in the IVET group may have stemmed from a greater sense of stimulation and realism. It may be that such realism demands less cognitive resources because the viewer is more directly immersed in story and requires less active imagination of the world. It also may be that because the characters appeared very real, it was harder for children to ignore the emotional content presented. Further research will explore if IVET has the capability to enhance children’s cognition in other types of tasks and if empathy for others can be fostered by experiencing their point of view in VR.

Authors

• Paola Araiza-Alba, Swinburne University of Technology
  Presenting Author

• Therese Keane, Swinburne University of Technology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jordy Kaufman, Swinburne University of Technology
  Non-Presenting Author