Social Presence in VR Empathy Game for Children: Empathic Interaction with the Virtual Characters

Abstract

This paper discusses children's empathic interactions with the VR characters. The study and findings in this paper were derived from a larger research study that explored the design and evaluation of empathic experiences for young children (6–9 years old) in VR environments. We found similarities between how children interacted with the VR characters and with real people (i.e., cognitive empathy and emotional contagion). This provides initial insight into children's experience of social presence with the VR characters. We suggest follow-up research on connection between empathy and social presence to explore the ways to create empathic VR experiences for children.