The Social Interaction Experiences of Older People in a 3D Virtual Environment

Virtual worlds offer much potential in supporting social interaction for older adults, particularly as a platform which can provide an interactive and immersive social experience. Yet, there has not been much work carried out to study the use, interaction and behavior of older people in 3D virtual world systems, especially studies which investigate their interactions in a fully functional virtual world. Most focus on issues related to usability such as cognitive difficulties when navigation in a 3D space and we know little about their perceptions and preferences when socializing in a virtual space. In this chapter, we report an experimental study examining the various factors which affected the social experience of older users in virtual worlds. The study involved 38 older participants engaging with a 3D and non-3D virtual grocery store. A mixed method of questionnaire and contextual interview was used for data collection and analysis. Overall, we found that physical presence was a significant predictor of many measures defining the quality of social interaction, yet participants often reported a sense of artificiality in their virtual experience. Interestingly, avatars were not considered directly important for social interaction and instead were only seen as a “place holder” to complete the tasks. Two factors contributed to this, the lack of non-verbal communication and the perceived difficulty in embodying physical people with virtual avatars

COVID-19 and older adults: Representations from the Chilean Health Ministry

Social representations are a set of ideas, practices and ideals that are part of the common sense of a group. Generally, the study of older adults’representations is conducted by looking at the media, however, this research incorporates a key agent in the health/ disease /care processes: the Ministry of Health. The main objective of this article is to identify older adults’ representations found in the Chilean Ministry of Health (MINSAL) news portal website during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Using framing analysis, four types of frames were found: age sub-groups, terms for referring to older adults, risk group and social solidarity. These four framesshare some ageist qualities, that is, they have a biased view of older people, representing them as a homogeneous, dependent and without agency group, since other people speak for them.Las representaciones sociales son un conjunto de ideas, prácticas e ideales que forman parte del sentido común de un grupo. Por lo general, el estudio de las representaciones de las personas mayores se realiza desde los medios de comunicación; sin embargo, esta investigación incorpora a un agente clave en los procesos de salud/ enfermedad/atención: los ministerios de Salud. El objetivo de este artículo es identificar la representación de las personas mayores enlas noticias del sitio web del Ministerio de Salud Chileno (MINSAL), en el contexto de pandemia por COVID-19, durante el año 2020. Utilizando un análisis de «marcos» (frames), se encontraron cuatro tipos: subgrupos etarios; términos para referirse a las personas mayores; grupo de riesgo y solidaridad social. Estos cuatro marcos comparten las cualidades de ser viejistas, es decir, que tienen una visión sesgada de las personas mayores, representándolas como un grupo homogéneo, dependiente y sin agencia, pues son otras personas las que hablan por ellas

Adaptive Model for Biofeedback Data Flows Management in the Design of Interactive Immersive Environments

[Abstract] The interactivity of an immersive environment comes up from the relationship that is established between the user and the system. This relationship results in a set of data exchanges between human and technological actors. The real-time biofeedback devices allow to collect in real time the biodata generated by the user during the exhibition. The analysis, processing and conversion of these biodata into multimodal data allows to relate the stimuli with the emotions they trigger. This work describes an adaptive model for biofeedback data flows management used in the design of interactive immersive systems. The use of an affective algorithm allows to identify the types of emotions felt by the user and the respective intensities. The mapping between stimuli and emotions creates a set of biodata that can be used as elements of interaction that will readjust the stimuli generated by the system. The real-time interaction generated by the evolution of the user’s emotional state and the stimuli generated by the system allows him to adapt attitudes and behaviors to the situations he faces

The effects of gender stereotype-based interfaces on users’ flow experience and performance

Despite recent advances in the personalization of education, it is still unknown how different kinds of personalization affect students’ experiences. To advance this literature, in this article, we present an experimental study with 307 participants investigating the effects of gender stereotype-based interfaces (in terms of colors and avatars stereotypes) on users’ flow experience (i.e., challenge–skill balance, merging of action and awareness, clear goals, feedback, concentration, control, loss of self-consciousness, and autotelic experience), and performance in a gamified educational system. The main results indicate that gender stereotype-based interfaces affect users’ action–awareness merging, however, do not affect users’ performance and overall flow experience. We contribute with the basis for new studies and challenge thorough future research attempts.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Negotiating stereotypes of older adults through avatars

Virtual Avatars can bring opportunities for enjoyment, social participation and exploration of identities. However, the configuration of avatar creation software may marginalise some groups of users due to them reinforcing social stereotypes that privilege youth and beauty, rather than representing the broader variety of human identities. Older adults are one group who may be disadvantaged with respect to avatars as avatar studies have typically focused on younger users. Considering that older populations are growing and that their participation in virtual environments is increasing, it is timely to investigate older adults' preferences in relation to avatars. We conducted a study with 23 participants (70+ years old) to understand the representational requirements of older adults when creating a humanoid virtual avatar. Our findings demonstrate that older adults are negotiating ageing stereotypes when creating a virtual body. These negotiations of body appearances range from: the Actual Avatar that by mirroring the self suggests an acceptance of the ageing body; the Vibrant Avatar that is idealising the physical condition of the self; the Other Avatar, that aims to explore other identities; and the Companion Avatar that creates another persona as company. These findings highlight that older adults have specific representational requirements when designing virtual avatars