Empathy Development in Young Children Using Interactive VR Games

Abstract

The development of empathy in children age 5 to 8 helps them build social skills such as interpersonal, problem-solving abilities, and emotional regulation. Research in Virtual Reality (VR) and Game Development highlights that use of VR games can help promote empathy development. My dissertation aims to explore the use of educational VR games for empathy development. In particular, it aims to study both the engagement and usability of these systems by young children. I plan to conduct empirical studies of the roles character's emotions, characters' memory sharing, and player's perspective taking play in fostering empathy development. In addition, I am interested in how these features promote player engagement and interest in other's life experiences. As a basis for my research, I will be using an interactive VR Empathy game that I developed with a team of game designers in Spring 2017. In addition, I aim to contribute a set of design guidelines and suggestions for empathy game designers.