Virtual Social Environment Research Articles

An Empirical Study of Portrait Rights on Emotional Evolution in Virtual Social Scenarios by Transformer and Cloud Computing

Facial expression recognition technology can improve the possibility of fugitives and persons subject to execution being discovered by public security and judicial personnel in the virtual world, thereby improving the actual effectiveness and credibility of the law. There may also be a risk of portrait rights infringement with this technology, and the user of the technology needs to inform the person whose facial expression is being extracted in advance and obtain permission. With the rapid progression of deep learning and artificial intelligence, 3D facial expression modeling has garnered increased significance in computer vision and graphics. We propose an innovative approach combining Transformer models with cloud computing to simulate facial expression evolution in virtual social environments. Leveraging Transformer-based feature extraction, our model integrates emotional cues from various modalities to accurately capture subtle changes over time.

Am I the odd one? Exploring (in)congruencies in the realism of avatars and virtual others in virtual reality

Virtual humans play a pivotal role in social virtual environments, shaping users’ VR experiences. The diversity in available options and users’ individual preferences can result in a heterogeneous mix of appearances among a group of virtual humans. The resulting variety in higher-order anthropomorphic and realistic cues introduces multiple (in)congruencies, eventually impacting the plausibility of the experience. However, related work investigating the effects of being co-located with multiple virtual humans of different appearances remains limited. In this work, we consider the impact of (in)congruencies in the realism of a group of virtual humans, including co-located others (agents) and one’s self-representation (self-avatar), on users’ individual VR experiences. In a 2×3 mixed design, participants embodied either (1) a personalized realistic or (2) a customized stylized self-avatar across three consecutive VR exposures in which they were accompanied by a group of virtual others being either (1) all realistic, (2) all stylized, or (3) mixed between stylized and realistic. Our results indicate groups of virtual others of higher realism, i.e., potentially more congruent with participants’ real-world experiences and expectations, were considered more human-like, increasing the feeling of co-presence and the impression of interaction possibilities. (In)congruencies concerning the homogeneity of the group did not cause considerable effects. Furthermore, our results indicate that a self-avatar’s congruence with the participant’s real-world experiences concerning their own physical body yielded notable benefits for virtual body ownership and self-identification for realistic personalized avatars. Notably, the incongruence between a stylized self-avatar and a group of realistic virtual others resulted in diminished ratings of self-location and self-identification. This suggests that higher-order (in)congruent visual cues that are not within the ego-central referential frame of one’s (virtual) body, can have an (adverse) effect on the relationship between one’s self and body. We conclude on the implications of our findings and discuss our results within current theories of VR experiences, considering (in)congruent visual cues and their impact on the perception of virtual others, self-representation, and spatial presence.

Age-related differences in subjective and physiological emotion evoked by immersion in natural and social virtual environments

Age-related changes in emotional processing are complex, with a bias toward positive information. However, the impact of aging on emotional responses in positive everyday situations remains unclear. Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool for investigating emotional processing, offering a unique balance between ecological validity and experimental control. Yet, limited evidence exists regarding its efficacy to elicit positive emotions in older adults. Our study aimed to explore age-related differences in positive emotional responses to immersion in both social and nonsocial virtual emotional environments. We exposed 34 younger adults and 24 older adults to natural and social 360-degree video content through a low immersive computer screen and a highly immersive Head-Mounted Display, while recording participants' physiological reactions. Participants also provided self-report of their emotions and sense of presence. The findings support VR’s efficacy in eliciting positive emotions in both younger and older adults, with age-related differences in emotional responses influenced by the specific video content rather than immersion level. These findings underscore the potential of VR as a valuable tool for examining age-related differences in emotional responses and developing VR applications to enhance emotional wellbeing across diverse user populations.

EXPRESS: Adoption of Virtual-Reality Headsets: the Role of Metaverse Trials for Consumers’ Usage and Purchase Intentions

Stand-alone virtual-reality (VR) headsets such as Meta’s Quest series enable highly immersive social experiences. As part of a trend toward a trillion dollar “metaverse,” a virtual social environment for which headsets constitute the major access device, these headsets have been predicted to grow the market for VR hardware substantially. Despite huge investments from companies, adoption of headsets has not reached the mass market yet. While some see the reason in the limited value that accessing the metaverse via VR headsets offers consumers, others blame the experience character of headsets as an adoption barrier. To shed light on this market shaping issue, this research introduces the concept of metaverse trials as a special case of consumer product trials in which consumers test VR headsets for engaging in direct experiences in virtual worlds together with others, and it explores how such a trial affects headset adoption. Using a sample of almost 100 participants of an extensive metaverse trial and a matched sample of non-trialists, the authors find trialists’ intention to use VR headsets in the future to be higher, while their intention to purchase VR headsets is lower. They also study determinants and outcomes of key facets of the metaverse experience.

Embodiment of the Manhood in Folklore: Keeping Secret from Women in Azerbaijan in the Context of a Real and Virtual Social Environment

This article investigates reasons for keeping secrets from women in real and virtual social environment of Azerbaijan through a manhood perspective. The investigation has revealed that the masculinity within the society creates the folklore patterns that prohibit the transfer of the secrets of this gender group to women and on the other hand, prohibit the connection of women with the male social environment.
 The attitudes supporting manhood are not expressed directly in the folklore texts, but are articulated sporadically, yet their symbolic manifestations influence all the events in the text. In general, investigating the psychosocial complexes within folklore provides extensive opportunities for the study of creative facts in a projective context. In this article, the embodiment of manhood in folklore has been analyzed based on Azerbaijani fairy-tales, jokes and proverbs. The results of the research reveal that sharing a secret to a woman is constructed as deprivation of manhood in the socio-cultural environment of Azerbaijan.
 In this article, the concept of the men’s keeping secrets from the women has also been investigated within the framework of the Azerbaijani-language virtual social environment. The examples from the Internet sources considering Azerbaijani folklore, which have recently become the cultural reality, have been selected and analyzed in order to explain manhood stereotypes. The results of the investigation show that unlike the traditional folklore facts, the concept of the men’s keeping secrets from the women in the virtual social environment is presented in a more ironic and comic manner. The urgency to examine manhood stereotypes in the context of humor and irony is explained through introducing the alternatives to the tradition and free attitude to the stereotypes of Internet folklore.

AWARENESS LEVELS OF SOCIAL STUDIES PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS REGARDING METAVERSE USE

In today's Technology Age, where communication technologies are gaining momentum, social, cultural, and technological competencies draw attention from individual and societal perspectives. Along with technological innovations, transformations are experienced in the societal development process in many areas, including education, communication, language, culture, economy, etc. In this context, innovative technologies in today's science and technology-oriented society bring applications of artificial intelligence and the virtual universe, exploring the interaction between humans and space and beyond. Metaverse stands out as a structure among these virtual universe applications. Metaverse, one of the popular artificial intelligence applications of recent times, emphasizes creating a virtual social environment beyond time with the understanding of space and beyond. Metaverse is a permanent three-dimensional world where many situations that we cannot experience in the real world can be experienced and where communication can be established with other people or virtual people. It is thought that it may be beneficial to support a course such as social studies, which includes many disciplines and aims to raise well-equipped citizens with technology. The social studies course is also noteworthy as an area focusing on developing digital competence and skills. In this direction, this research aims to reveal the awareness levels of pre-service social studies teachers about metaverse usage from various variables. The experimental scanning method from quantitative research methods was utilized during the research process. According to the results of the study, while the awareness of the pre-service teachers about the application of metaverse as a current, popular technology and communication source is not found to be significant in terms of variables such as gender, age, and class level, it is significant regarding the university they attend, frequency of internet use, thoughts about using the internet/technology in education, digital environment and metaverse themed education, certificate program, and participation in courses.

Technological advances for getting insight into the learning capacities of birds in the vocal domain

Abstract Birds produce different types of sounds in different contexts such as begging for food in youngsters, alerting to a danger, defending a territory or attracting a sexual partner. About half of the bird species are able to transform their vocalizations through imitation, improvisation or invention of sounds. Here we review the different experimental procedures that have been used to study the learning capacities of birds in the vocal domain and in the auditory domain, with a particular emphasis on recent technological developments. Nowadays, it is possible to record individual vocalizations of birds living in social groups or to record continuously the vocal ontogeny of birdsong. In conditioning experiments, new paradigms have successfully replaced food rewards with a socio-sexual reward. It is possible to engage in vocal interactions with a bird using dedicated computer systems. In both the laboratory and more recently in the field, different techniques have been used to train young oscine songbirds to learn from acoustic models. The use of virtual social environments and robots as social agents are also promising avenues. All together, these new techniques will permit researchers to explore more deeply the umwelt of bird species.

Visual Facial Enhancements Can Significantly Improve Speech Perception in the Presence of Noise.

Human speech perception is generally optimal in quiet environments, however it becomes more difficult and error prone in the presence of noise, such as other humans speaking nearby or ambient noise. In such situations, human speech perception is improved by speech reading, i.e., watching the movements of a speaker's mouth and face, either consciously as done by people with hearing loss or subconsciously by other humans. While previous work focused largely on speech perception of two-dimensional videos of faces, there is a gap in the research field focusing on facial features as seen in head-mounted displays, including the impacts of display resolution, and the effectiveness of visually enhancing a virtual human face on speech perception in the presence of noise. In this paper, we present a comparative user study ( N=21) in which we investigated an audio-only condition compared to two levels of head-mounted display resolution (1832×1920 or 916×960 pixels per eye) and two levels of the native or visually enhanced appearance of a virtual human, the latter consisting of an up-scaled facial representation and simulated lipstick (lip coloring) added to increase contrast. To understand effects on speech perception in noise, we measured participants' speech reception thresholds (SRTs) for each audio-visual stimulus condition. These thresholds indicate the decibel levels of the speech signal that are necessary for a listener to receive the speech correctly 50% of the time. First, we show that the display resolution significantly affected participants' ability to perceive the speech signal in noise, which has practical implications for the field, especially in social virtual environments. Second, we show that our visual enhancement method was able to compensate for limited display resolution and was generally preferred by participants. Specifically, our participants indicated that they benefited from the head scaling more than the added facial contrast from the simulated lipstick. We discuss relationships, implications, and guidelines for applications that aim to leverage such enhancements.

Intervention of intelligent social patterns combined with cognitive psychology on social disorders in college students

BackgroundSocial anxiety disorder is a common mental disorder characterized by concerns about being evaluated, denied, or embarrassed in social situations. In recent years, with the increasing number of college students born in the 2000s, social anxiety disorder has shown an upward trend, which has a negative impact on their mental health and social function.Subjects and MethodsIn order to better help the post-00s college students to deal with social anxiety disorders, the research combines intelligent social mode and cognitive psychology. Intelligent social networking mode uses computer and Internet technology to provide a virtual social environment to simulate real social situations. Cognitive psychology intervention focuses on individual thinking, beliefs and cognitive strategies, and helps to reduce social anxiety by adjusting negative thinking patterns and establishing positive self-evaluation.Results According to SPSS23.0 analysis, intelligent social mode can provide students with safe and controllable practice opportunities for those with social anxiety disorder, and reduce fear and discomfort in real social situations. In addition, 68 percent of the participants believed that the cognitive psychology intervention can help them adjust their negative thinking and increase their confidence.Conclusions Intelligent social model combined with cognitive psychology intervention method can not only relieve participants’ anxiety in social situations, but also promote their self-growth and mental health development. The results show that this method can help promote the mental health development of “post-00 s” college students, help them better adapt to and integrate into the social environment, and improve their quality of life and happiness.Acknowledgement2021 Guangdong University Ideological and political education project (No. 2021GXSZ040).

Persistence and pleasure in VR: Enhancing Exercise Endurance and Enjoyment through Virtual Environments

Virtual Reality (VR) provides an enjoyable addition to stationary physical exercise and can improve performance while exercising. The aim of this study is to explore the effectiveness of three interactive virtual environments (i.e., social, relaxing, stressful) on enjoyment and persistence during strength-based exercises. In a within-subjects experiment, 97 healthy young adults completed four consecutive sets of two strength-based exercises. Participants completed one set as baseline and then each participant completed three more sets in three different interactive environments, experienced through a VR headset. Results showed that both the stressful virtual environment, where participants were hanging suspended over a city, and the social virtual environment where participants were audibly encouraged in a stadium, increased participants’ persistence in both exercises, when compared to the relaxing virtual environment. Specifically, the relaxing sunny beach environment caused poorer performances in a dead hang exercise among men (n = 30), and poorer performances in a core exercise among women (n = 66). Somewhat paradoxically, this relaxing virtual beach environment was considered the most enjoyable environment among both male and female participants. The potential of VR in exercise lies in its ability to provide pleasurable and performance-enhancing immersive environments that may be too expensive or dangerous in reality.

CREATING VIRTUAL REALITY USING A SOCIAL VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT: PHYGITAL EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEUM PASSION IN SORDEVOLO

Abstract. The paper addresses the digital curation of immersive and virtual spaces for the cultural heritage sector. One of the research objectives is to define a methodological and operational workflow for developing a virtual environment designed using a social virtual environment. The use of social worlds in virtual reality (VR) is one of the possible entry points to the metaverse, understood as a way of experiencing digital reality. The possibility of creating a digital space that replicates real space offers not only the opportunity for people to gather in a virtual place but also allows designers to provide a parallel and augmented experience in terms of content.The case study aims to create the digital twin of the temporary Phygital Exhibition, which opened in July 2022 at the Sordevolo Passion Museum in the Church of Santa Marta. Unlike the permanent collection, which recounts the tradition of popular theatre in Sordevolo for the performance of the Passion of Christ, the Phygital Exhibition focuses on documenting the activity related to the design and construction of the scenography. In the virtual environment, the physical space is replicated with a low level of detail to emphasize the VR exhibition, composed of a series of panels with the possibility to interact with historical documentation, drawings, and pictures. The virtual space is also enriched by video and 3D models not available in real space, which documents the transformation of the scenography over the years.

Social Media Addiction and Its Relationship to Symptoms of Depression and Generalized Anxiety in Deaf and Hard-Of-Hearing Students

Social media has become a virtual social and entertainment environment for many individuals. In today's society, although social media provide a useful way to connect with peers, it can expose users to addiction to these means, affecting their mental health. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the relationship between social media addiction and symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety in deaf and hard-of-hearing students (DHH). Data was collected from 165 students in integration schools in southern Saudi Arabia. The mean age of the sample ranged from M = 18.6 years, SD = 1.81 years. The Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (Andresen et al., 1994) was used. Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006). The results revealed that more than 50% of DHH students have a moderate level of addiction to social media. More than 25% have a severe level of addiction. In addition, as expected, the results showed a statistically significant positive relationship between social media addiction and both symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety. Linear regression analysis showed that generalized depression and anxiety significantly predicted social media addiction. The study recommended the importance of spreading psychological awareness of the dangers of social media addiction, and the damage it carries to the mental health of individuals. Holding awareness courses and lectures for DHH students and people with disabilities in general on the negative effects of social media addiction on mental health.

Assessing Virtual Reality Spaces for Elders Using Image-Based Sentiment Analysis and Stress Level Detection.

Seniors, in order to be able to fight loneliness, need to communicate with other people and be engaged in activities to keep their minds active to increase their social capital. There is an intensified interest in the development of social virtual reality environments, either by commerce or by academia, to address the problem of social isolation of older people. Due to the vulnerability of the social group involved in this field of research, the need for the application of evaluation methods regarding the proposed VR environments becomes even more important. The range of techniques that can be exploited in this field is constantly expanding, with visual sentiment analysis being a characteristic example. In this study, we introduce the use of image-based sentiment analysis and behavioural analysis as a technique to assess a social VR space for elders and present some promising preliminary results.

Information Security and Online Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Relevance of the problem in question is associated with academics facing information threats in the virtual educational environment during the COVID-19 pandemic and the short-term transition of the education process to distance learning. We aim to analyze information threats to individuals in the Runet virtual educational environment and suggest measures to neutralize them. Research into this problem relies on a structural and comparative analysis as the theoretical approach. The empirical method of exploring this problem is an Internet-based study of user engagement in the Runet, focusing on cases in question and identifying the content that is most popular with the users. A classification of the current information threats is provided, and mechanisms for the elimination of emerging threats are discussed. Although Russia puts considerable effort, at the legislative level, into the prevention of malevolent information actions on academics, a number of particularities of virtual social environments allow for partial implementation of the measures only. The results may be of interest for specialists dealing with challenges of modern education, information warfare, information security of virtual social environments.

Traces in Virtual Environments: A Framework and Exploration to Conceptualize the Design of Social Virtual Environments.

Creating social Virtual Environments (VEs) is an ongoing challenge. Traces of prior human interactions, or traces of use, are used in Physical Environments (PEs) to create more meaningful relationships with the PE and the people within it. In this paper, we explore how the concept of traces of use can be transferred from PEs to VEs to increase known success factors for social VEs, such as increased social presence. First, we introduce a conceptualization and discussion ($N=4$ expert interviews) of a "Traces in VEs" framework. Second, we evaluate the framework in two lab studies ($N=46$ in total), exploring the effect of traces in (i) VE vs. PE, and (ii) on social presence. Our findings confirm that traces increase the feeling of social presence. However, their meaning may differ depending on the environment. Our framework offers a structured overview of relevant components and relationships that need to be considered when designing meaningful user experiences in VE using traces. Thus, our work is valuable for practitioners and researchers who systematically want to create social VEs.

Driving singing behaviour in songbirds using a multi-modal, multi-agent virtual environment

Interactive biorobotics provides unique experimental potential to study the mechanisms underlying social communication but is limited by our ability to build expressive robots that exhibit the complex behaviours of birds and small mammals. An alternative to physical robots is to use virtual environments. Here, we designed and built a modular, audio-visual 2D virtual environment that allows multi-modal, multi-agent interaction to study mechanisms underlying social communication. The strength of the system is an implementation based on event processing that allows for complex computation. We tested this system in songbirds, which provide an exceptionally powerful and tractable model system to study social communication. We show that pair-bonded zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) communicating through the virtual environment exhibit normal call timing behaviour, males sing female directed song and both males and females display high-intensity courtship behaviours to their mates. These results suggest that the environment provided is sufficiently natural to elicit these behavioral responses. Furthermore, as an example of complex behavioral annotation, we developed a fully unsupervised song motif detector and used it to manipulate the virtual social environment of male zebra finches based on the number of motifs sung. Our virtual environment represents a first step in real-time automatic behaviour annotation and animal–computer interaction using higher level behaviours such as song. Our unsupervised acoustic analysis eliminates the need for annotated training data thus reducing labour investment and experimenter bias.

Efficacy of the Virtual Reality Intervention VR FestLab on Alcohol Refusal Self-Efficacy: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial.

It is currently unknown whether a virtual social environment can support young people in building their skills to overcome peer pressure when offered alcohol. This study evaluated the efficacy of the newly developed virtual reality simulation game VR FestLab on the refusal self-efficacy regarding social pressures to drink of Danish male and female students aged 15–18. VR FestLab features a party setting where adolescents can “steer” their own party experience. Eleven schools were included in a cluster-randomized controlled trial and allocated to either the intervention (n = 181) or the active control group (n = 191). Students in intervention schools played VR FestLab, while those in the control group played the VR game Oculus Quest—First Steps. The primary outcome measure was the social pressure subscale of the drinking refusal self-efficacy scale (DRSEQ-RA). The intervention effects were measured immediately after the intervention/control session (T1) and after a 6-week follow-up (T2). Data were examined using linear mixed regression models. Our study did not demonstrate a significant effect of drinking refusal self-efficacy at T1. For all secondary outcomes, we observed no substantial differences between the intervention and control groups. This study provides new insights into the feasibility and effectiveness of an innovative virtual reality alcohol prevention tool. VR FestLab can be an innovative and promising contribution to complement existing school-based alcohol prevention, but more research is needed to improve its effectiveness.

Runet Users' Attitude to Outrageous Content in Virtual Social Environments

This study of the Runet virtual social environments deals with identifying and analyzing user reactions to watching a video clip containing outrageous behavior, and studying social attitudes of the respondents. The Celebrium-X platform employing the adjoint ideomotion technology for remote collection and processing of group neuro-responses was chosen as a research tool. As the empirical basis of the research, the raw data obtained as a result of the conducted survey was used. The results of the study have shown the respondents' negative attitude to publishing of outrageous video clips in virtual social environments. The Internet audience realizes a negative effect produced by the aggressive content on people's psychological sphere and social behavior.
 
 Received: 12 October 2021 / Accepted: 11 December 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022

Key Advanced Research Initiative: A Manifesto for the New-Generation Artificial Intelligence

The goal here is to identify key directions for the future advanced research initiatives in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and beyond. The following areas are identified as having particular importance: (1) socially emotional, ethical, and moral AI, (2) self-developing and self-sustainable AI, and (3) human-analogous AI, inspired by the human psychology. As a result, a general concept is formulated with the intent to clarify and unify the currently popular slogans, including Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Strong AI, Human-Level or Humanlike AI (HLAI), Brain-Inspired or Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA), and more. The key idea of the proposed concept is that future AI must open a new angle of view and new perspectives to humans, thereby enriching and transforming the society, helping it to solve its problems and taking the civilization to a new level. While being created by humans, for humans, and fully compatible with humans at the social level, it will not be “a human in silicon”, but rather an “alien”: intelligent, friendly, and welcome. Its principles will combine preprogrammed basic functions and its own natural ontogeny in a virtual social environment. Forms of implementation will range from virtual entities to wearable electronics and autonomous robots. The expected impact on the society will be immense and crucial for its survival.

Proposing a model of social media user interaction with fake news

PurposeThis study aims to understand the allure and danger of fake news in social media environments and propose a theoretical model of the phenomenon.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative research study used the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) approach to analyze how and why people used social media during the 2016 US presidential election.FindingsThe thematic analysis revealed people were gratified after using social media to connect with friends and family and to gather and share information and after using it as a vehicle of expression. Participants found a significant number of fake news stories on social media during the 2016 US presidential election. Participants tried to differentiate between fake news and real news using fact-checking websites and news sources and interacted with the social media users who posted fake news and became part of the echo chamber. Behaviors like these emerged in the analysis that could not be completely explained by UGT and required further exploration which resulted in a model that became the core of this study.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a small-scale exploratory study with eight diverse participants, findings should not be generalized to larger populations. Time-specific self-reporting of information from social media and fake news during the 2016 US presidential election. Upgrading public policies related to social media is recommended in the study, contributing to burgeoning policy discussions and provides recommendations for both purveyors of social media and public policymakers.Practical implicationsUpgrade in public policies related to social media is recommended in the study and contributes to burgeoning policy discussions and provides recommendations for both purveyors of social media and public policymakers.Social implicationsSocial media users are spending increased time on their preferred platforms. This study increases the understanding of the nature, function and transformation of virtual social media environments and their effects on real individuals, cultures and societies.What is original/of value about the paper?This exploratory study establishes the foundation on which to expand research in the area of social media use and fake news.Originality/valueThis exploratory study establishes the foundation to expand research in the area of social media use and fake news.