Long-Term Psychophysical Impacts on Children Post-Experiencing VR Content

This research focuses on the evaluation of psychophysical impacts of children experiencing video content in virtual reality (VR) in view of its potential application to analyze learning skills, social interactions, and health issues. In this context, this paper investigates the emotional dimensions such as valence, arousal, and intensity, and the physiological parameters such as heart rate and oxygen saturation while experiencing different categories of VR contents for the target group. In particular, the lasting nature of the emotional and physiological impact is investigated for its potential use in analyzing social behavior next to experience of VR content. For this purpose, a novel dataset consisting of three categories of VR content is developed, namely, recreational, violent, and training. An experimental setup is also designed for school-going children to evaluate the emotional dimensions using the well-known facial emotion analysis (FEA) system. The physiological parameters of the participants are recorded alongside the facial evaluation. The findings of this research suggest that VR can have lasting nature of positive or negative impact on emotion and physiology of children depending the types of content experienced. In general, this research provides valuable insights of VR contents for their potential use in better immersion and engagement, improving learning skills and social interactions, controlling anxiety and other mental health issues.