RESEARCH PAPER
INTER-
ACTIVERSE
ENCOURAGE PEER INTERACTION FOR CHILDREN’S GROWTH THROUGH VR
PERSONAL PROJECT
WHERE
PSC 142 COURSE @UC DAVIS
DURATION
TWO MONTHS (RESEARCH - JULY 2022, DESIGN - OCT 2023)
ROLES
UX RESEARCHER
OVERVIEW
A virtual reality product that is designed to provide a new environment where children can interact with peers consistently even if they do not have to meet in person, so then encourage them to keep their social and personal development.
IDEATION
Because of the sudden pandemic, it was impossible to continue our daily routines, going to school or work and meeting friends or families physically, under the safety restrictions. The world was still coming to a halt in 2022. Professor of the course PSC 142, Dr. Ribeiro, gave the paper assignment for the final exam with the topic, "To create a pandemic-safe activity, toy, or game that will help foster your area of social development, even if families are sheltering in place." I, who learned the importance of peer interaction on children's social and personal development through this course, felt distressed that children cannot gain the advantages of peer interaction because of the pandemic. Therefore, I wanted to provide a new way of peer interaction without in-person meetings. The solution I found was to create a new 'virtual' world that is the same as the real 'actual' world visually and functionally.
WHO
From Nayoung Kim
WHAT
A virtual reality product for encourage children’s peer interaction
WHEN
Summer 2022
WHERE
PSC 142: Social & Personal developmental (Dr. Julia Ribeiro) @ UC Davis
WHY
Peer interaction is so effective in children’s social and personal development; however, during the pandemic, it was unable that children meet other peers in real world and build socialization. So I hope to provide a new place where children could meet other peers even though there are obstacles prevent them to meet.
RESEARCH
FIRST SUPPORTIVE RESEARCH
In The Life Cycle: Readings in Human Development, Willard W. Hartup argued that peer interaction dramatically affects children's social development and mental health. It involves the growth of the five parts of children: attachment and sociality, aggression, sex, moral development, and anxiety and emotional disturbance.
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Attachment and Sociality​
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From the third to fourth years of life, the frequency of contact with peers increases and peaks during middle childhood. Interestingly, an interaction between mother and child has different effects than an interaction between peers. They employ qualitatively different behaviors to express affection to age-mates and adults. Moreover, a finding supports a relationship between peer interaction and social ability. According to Hartup (1970), children who are socially rejected child become inactive child in social activities. Those children are neither outgoing nor friendly, either very high or very low in self-esteem, mainly dependent on adults for emotional support, anxious, and inappropriately aggressive.
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Aggression
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Peer interaction is one of the effective ways children master their aggressive impulses. According to the results of research from Patterson, Littman, and Bricker (1967) and Patterson and Cobb (1971), children who lack exposure to contact with peers (such as Rough-and-tumble play) show generalized hostility, unusually aggressive behavior, or timid in the presence of aggressive attack.
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Sex
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Children primarily form their sexual attitudes and fundamental patterns of sexual behavior not only by gaining a deeper understanding of their sexual identity through peer interactions but also by shaping them predominantly through these interactions.
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Moral Development
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According to Piaget (1932), children have objective moral orientation in early childhood. For subjective moral orientation, they must be exposed to some opportunity to view ethical rules as changeable products of group consensus, such as social 'give-and-take.' Keasey (1971) also supported a positive relationship between peer interactions and moral judgment with research based on 144 preadolescents. She found that children who joined more clubs and social organizations had higher honest judgment scores than children in less organized groups. Not only Piaget and Keasey, other researchers such as Gold (1962), Porteus and Johnson (1965), Campbell and Yarrow (1961), Klaus (1959), and Roff (1961) also agreed on a linkage between peer adjustment and moral behavior with evidence that childhood failure in peer relations was correlated with lousy conduct discharge rates in adulthood.
Anxiety and Emotional Disturbance
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Peer interaction is also effective in the control of anxiety and emotional disturbance. According to Davids and Parenti's research (1958), popularity in the disturbed groups is also inversely related to the relative degree of maladjustment. Also, Roff (1963) supports that a child in poor peer relations is predictive of both neurotic disturbance and psychotic episodes of a variety of types because rejections in peer interaction could bring out anxiety, lowered self-esteem, and hostility, and it could lead to further rejection.
SECOND SUPPORTIVE RESEARCH
The ability of emotional regulation is extraordinarily significant in children’s social and personal development. The peer’s role in emotional regulation differs from the parents', and children could regulate their negative emotions more with peers. In addition, children who cannot associate with peers well would be shown lower achievement in psychology and academics.
Waters. 2011. Children’s emotion regulation understanding development, social context, and maternal influences. University of California, Davis.
Children who effectively regulate their emotions can control emotions physiologically, behaviorally, and experientially at similar levels. Children are also assumed to be equally good regulators across different contexts. As a result, children who are effective emotional regulators have a higher possibility of being good self-regulators, allowing them to hang out with others well.
Hessler, D. M., & Fainsilber Katz, L. (2007). Children's emotion regulation: Self-report and physiological response to peer provocation. Developmental psychology, 43(1), 27–38.
DEFINE
EXPECTATION
According to several supportive pieces of research, I could find a positive, effective influence of peer interaction on children's personal, social, and academic development. Therefore, I expect that children could keep interacting with their peers in virtual reality even though there are some obstacles (such as COVID-19) to prevent their interaction in real life and could gain the following advantages:
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Educational activity environment for children who unable to have a direct peer interaction (ex. children with autism)
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Contribute to children’s and society’s growth by providing a new place where they can develop their ability of emotional regulation
RESULT
WHAT MUST CONSIDERED
As a result, I selected the following three main elements that we have to consider for building the most effective virtual reality product to encourage children's peer interaction:
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The sense of reality: In virtual reality, the immersion difference varies depending on the degree of reality. Since it is created for children more affected by visual factors than adults, 'InterActiverse' keeps elements as similar to reality as possible, while most existing VR products usually prefer animated graphics. It is essential not to transform children users' voices, faces, etc. By maintaining each user's characteristics perfectly, we can encourage children to improve immersion and keep reminding them that they are interacting with REAL friends or teachers even though they are in virtual reality.
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Various teamwork experiences: Exposure to various teamwork situations in which children can experience peer interaction is essential to encourage their social and personal development. In addition to the roles you are familiar with, they take on roles that are difficult to experience in real life. Experiencing the exact missions/challenges multiple times in different positions/roles, 'InterActiverse' encourages children to develop empathy and expand their perspectives.
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Various places: The most significant advantage of virtual reality is no place restrictions. 'InterActiverse' can best utilize this advantage. By providing not only entertainment but also for education or new unfamiliar experience through activities, we encourage children to interact with each other in various places by expanding their usual behavioral radius.
SKETCH EXAMPLES
EVALUATION
We become unique depending on our identities and values that are shaped according to the environment where we live and the interaction with whom. With the improvement of technology, we can expand our environment from the actual 'traditional' world to the new 'online' world. In the online world, we can consistently interact with others even if we do not meet others in person.
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InterActiverse was created to encourage the majority of children who cannot continue interacting with peers because of the pandemic. So then, if after the pandemic is over? Can this product be used only while in the pandemic? The answer is 'NO.' I believe InterActiverse still has the positive potential to improve the environment for better peer interaction even if the world is not more to a halt because many children still feel difficulties attending school and having peer interaction because of impairment, such as autistic children or children with hearing impairment. Therefore, the usefulness of InterActiverse still exists regardless of the pandemic.
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In addition, the realization of InterActiverse is enhanced with the announcement of a mixed-reality product developed by Apple in June 2023. The Apple Vision Pro has become a great example of how it can further strengthen the possibility of realizing InterActiverse. Unlike previous VR devices, which commonly used animated graphics primarily for gaming, Apple's Vision Pro is designed more for real-life applications. Therefore, I believe the required technologies for InterActiverse are not exaggerated capabilities but achievable functionalities.