2023 conference paper
Virtual Reality Induces Awe but Possibly Not Accommodation
Proceedings of the 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2023.
open access via repository.isls.org (publisher PDF)
Source: ORCID
Added: June 1, 2024
Awe is a transformative emotion associated with positive educational and psychological outcomes, and is caused by experiences of vastness that induce accommodation.Vast VR scenes have been found to elicit awe.We examined self-reported causes of awe among grade 3-8 studentsa previously unstudied age group regarding awein a virtual environment portraying entities over 20 orders of magnitude from atom to Sun.Most students reported feeling awe, around half specifically enough to be coded based on a priori categories drawn from the literature.Vastness of scale (including both large and small entities, and large differences in scale) was the most common cause of awe.Surprisingly, no student responses were related to accommodation.Vastness of evolution and degree of immersion were identified as novel causes of awe.Thus, even young children can experience awe in VR, opening possibilities for productive VR in education at the elementary school level.