Research Roundup (#10)
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Welcome...
Welcome to the tenth-ever Research Roundup! A weekly catch-up on the latest developments in the field of XR research.
It’s been a busy-ish week, so let's not hang around.
The Week in 3 (Sentences)
New research on the dynamics of social VR has explored the framing of harassment in virtual spaces as well as the mental health benefits.
Studies on learning and cognition have examined the potential effectiveness of VR for nursing education, and developed VR that works for mice and men.
And finally, advances in AI and XR integration have explored AI that intervenes to provide AR task assistance, and motion anonymisation techniques to address data privacy concerns.
The Week in 300 (words)
Regular readers will know that educational applications of VR tend to get a rougher ride when it comes to the evidence base. It continued this week when researchers compared a VR nursing simulation with a 2D version and concluded that it was better to use the 2D one. The research isn't perfect in several ways, the allocation to groups was not random and there was no measure of knowledge retention. Advocates of VR in education may also consider the measures used, the design of the simulation, the onboarding, and general pedagogical stance. However, if you didn't delve deeper, and just read the headline, then it wouldn't make good reading.
Researchers this week revealed their innovative designs for a VR setup that works for both humans and non-humans (of a certain size): Dome VR. It was designed to provide opportunities to compare across species without the results being confounded by very different VR setups. Behavioural neuroscience is traditionally highly reductionist in it's approach, and the authors argue that VR could help study reactions to more naturalistic stimuli across species. Preliminary data confirmed the utility of the setup comparing mice, men and macaques. It's not yet been commercialised to entertain your pet hamster, but I'd not rule anything out.
And finally, in the spirit of not ruling anything out researchers from Germany have highlighted yet again the inherent dangers in sharing large amounts of individual motion data, as is often done with XR applications. Handily, they also introduced 'Pantomime' to disguise the data by removing any biometric markers but nevertheless providing enough detail to be of use. Whilst only a proof of concept let's hope it will be developed for VR applications. As we increasingly share our biological signatures it is reassuring to know that ways of mitigating the data security and privacy issues are on the research agenda.
Paper of the Week
Our paper of the week this week goes to a research team in America who explored the relationship between problematic social VR use and mental health.
It is hard not to be aware of some of the potential negative effects on mental health of social media use, such as depression, anxiety and loneliness. But what about Social VR? Do the same rules apply?
Social VR is of course very different from more traditional social media given it's use of virtual spaces and interactions within them. It is therefore unsurprising, but reassuring, that the relationships between usage and mental health are not the same either.
In particular, the researchers found that problematic social VR usage was related to decreased social support in real-life but not in social VR, which was thought to mitigate any mental health issues.
When looking at general usage, the amount of social VR usage was related to enhanced support within social VR, and better mental health. Indeed, social VR may create sufficiently supportive communities as to help with mental health challenges rather than create them.
With what is a fairly niche area, the final sample size was of particular note. The researchers managed to collect data from an impressive 464 respondents, after removing duplicate responses, failed attention checks, duplicate IP addresses and impossible ages.
The distinction between the total usage of social media and problematic usage was also particularly noteworthy given that mixed results tend to be reported when total usage is used.
Overall, a fascinating read that will be welcomed by many in the social VR communities! With social VR, as it is now, associated with better mental health outcomes it is nice to end on what is a good news story...