Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Largest study of video games for learning involves 400,000 players worldwide (computer.org)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: Video games are often advocated as educational tools that can increase players’ knowledge through entertainment, but published studies of their effectiveness are limited in both the number and diversity of participants. More robust evidence on a very large, varied, worldwide sample, is now offered by the first massive study of games for learning, according to a research paper just published in the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics . The study focused on a notoriously difficult educational goal, that is teaching the general public about aircraft emergency procedures. Involving more than 400,000 players speaking 40 different languages, results show that playing a survival video game about aircraft accidents (the “Prepare for Impact” game) significantly improves players’ safety knowledge.

Submission + - Existential Video Games elicit players' reflections about mortality

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: Traditional media ranging from plays to books to films often deal with strong existential themes, prompting deep reflections in viewers. It is thus natural to wonder if video games could too become a source of philosophical insights. A paper in the Entertainment Computing journal discusses this game design direction, defining the genre of Existential Video Games, that is games which aim at encouraging existential reflection, dealing with human concerns such as death, isolation, and meaninglessness of life. After analyzing the design of seven existing games that match the definition, the paper carries out a study with 43 participants who were asked to play an existential video game. Results show that the video game effectively elicited reflections in the majority of players about their own mortality. However, some players with higher gaming experience did not appreciate the embedding of existential themes, and a slow, reflective pace in a video game.

Submission + - Existential Video Games elicit players' reflections about mortality

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: Traditional media ranging from plays to books to films often deal with strong existential themes, prompting deep reflections in viewers. It is thus natural to wonder if video games could too become a source of philosophical insights. A paper in the Entertainment Computing journal discusses this game design direction, defining the genre of Existential Video Games, that is games which aim at encouraging existential reflection, dealing with human concerns such as death, isolation, and meaninglessness of life. After analyzing the design of seven existing games that match the definition, the paper carries out a study with 43 participants who were asked to play an existential video game. Results show that the video game effectively elicited reflections in the majority of players about their own mortality. However, some players with higher gaming experience did not appreciate the embedding of existential themes, and a slow, reflective pace in a video game.

Submission + - The Independent: Interactive App Makes Boring Airline Safety Briefings Fun (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Independent reports about a novel use of mobile game technology: delivering pre-flight airline safety briefings.

A free app [ Air Safety World] promises to revolutionise the most boring part of flying, the dreaded pre take-off safety lecture. [] Two virtual flight attendants guide you through interactive training procedures, that you‘ve probably heard of but never fully understood. [] It also gamifies the process. It allows you to play a series of games to test out your new skills, including the delightfully named Door Ninja where you are tasked with opening a series of emergency exit doors on a timed course. Users collect points which they can use to build and fly a fleet of planes around the world. Professor Luca Chittaro (HCI Lab, University of Udine) is positive about the technology. “Our study has shown that making the briefing highly interactive improves participant’s performance in the real world”.

Submission + - Mindfulness meditators are less affected by Virtual Reality (elsevier.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: People often enroll in mindfulness meditation courses to pursue better health, but can such practice have unintended consequences on how they are engaged by emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR) ? That's what comes out from a new study published by the Computers in Human Behavior journal. A group of people with no experience in meditation tried scary VR experiences with an head-mounted display, while researchers measured their emotional reactions through physiological parameters such as heart activity and facial muscles activity. Then, half participants followed a typical 8-week mindfulness course, while the other half did not (control group). At the end of the 8 weeks, they tried again VR. Participants who had practiced mindfulness during the 8 weeks were much less affected by VR: the scary VR experiences were not able to increase their heart rate as 8 weeks earlier, facial muscles activity was reduced, and their subjective perception of VR was consistent with this lack of engagement. On the contrary, the control group did not show such changes, and was still affected by VR. The paper interprets this emotional deactivation of meditators in terms of self-regulation of attention and detachment that can be gained through mindfulness, and can persist also when people (as these participants trying VR) are not meditating.

Submission + - Video Games can Improve Terror Attack Preparedness, even if you don't play them

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: A study just published by the Computers in Human Behavior journal explores the potential of video games as terror attack preparedness materials for the general public. In the video game that participants tried (screenshots can be seen in the paper), players started a normal day going to a train station and performing actions such as purchasing a ticket and finding a train. Then, they suddenly found themselves in a bombing scenario that they had to survive. In addition to showing that playing the game greatly increased players’ knowledge about preparedness, the study also considered a second group of participants who did not play the game but watched instead a video of the game play. Results indicate that passively watching someone else play the game is as effective as actively playing the game in terms of learning preparedness knowledge. However, they also point out a significant difference concerning psychological effects on threat appraisal: general perception of personal vulnerability to terror attacks and their severity increased more in those who actively played the game rather than those who passively watched game play.

Submission + - Marrying AI and Cinematography to Visualize 3D Emergency Simulations (youtube.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: Computer-based simulations of emergency evacuations increasingly use 3D graphics. However, it is difficult for users to follow the action by manually controlling the viewpoint to catch many different events affecting large groups of virtual characters. A new solution, inspired by cinematography, is described in a paper just published by the Computers & Graphics journal, and demonstrated in this video. The real-time, automatic camera control system exploits AI techniques to model a combination of abilities typical of the camera operator (choosing proper camera positions and angle to shoot some events) and the director (review shots and edit them). The video shows how the system can respond to user’s requests by automatically producing different movies of the same simulation of a full Airbus 320 evacuation.

Submission + - Virtual Reality Games can Improve Memory Retention of Safety Instructions (youtube.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: Using a virtual reality (VR) headset to experience risky situations as immersive 3D games improves memory retention of passenger safety instructions, according to research published in the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, and illustrated by a YouTube video. Researchers recruited occasional flyers: half of them played a VR gaming experience of an airliner water landing and evacuation, while the other half studied a real airline safety card. After one week, passengers who had studied the safety card suffered a significant loss of knowledge, while passengers who had played the VR game fully retained the safety knowledge gained. The research group has now made available its emergency water landing experience also for the Oculus Rift.

Submission + - Racial Discrimination Affects Virtual Reality Characters too (elsevier.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: You are looking for the exit of a building in a virtual reality experience when a virtual character gets stuck in a room and cries for your help. Could the color of the skin (black or white) of the virtual human influence your decision to provide or refuse help? That's what comes out from a new study published by the Computers in Human Behavior journal. White users were told that they had to reach the exit of the virtual building as soon as possible. The number of users who decided to help tripled when the virtual victim was white rather than black. Researchers tried also other conditions in which they did not put users under time pressure: this reduced the discrimination, although the number of users who helped remained more favorable for the white rather than the black virtual human. The paper explains these results in terms of the automatic categorization processes that originate from unwanted, unconscious social and cultural biases: putting people under pressure increases automatic responses, leading to more discrimination towards the black character.

Submission + - Is your flight ending up in a water landing? There's an app for that! (uniud.it)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says that when a plane has to perform a water landing (ditching), passengers must be able to wear life vests within 25 seconds. Unfortunately, FAA research also shows that passengers do not pay attention or do not clearly comprehend the pre-flight briefings and safety cards used by airlines to instruct them.
To face the issue in a novel and more fun way, the HCI Lab at the University of Udine has just published a free Life Vest app, available for smartphones and tablets (Android, Apple, Windows Mobile) . Life Vest is an interactive game that allows you to try what to do in a water landing with a 3D experience. Through three different levels, you can interact with the game character to make it wear the life vest properly and to hopefully jump out of the plane alive. You can also face time challenges and compare your results with those of your friends and other players. The 3D model of the life vest is an high-fidelity reproduction of a real vest used by many airlines.

Submission + - Biofeedback used to make people anxious

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: Biofeedback is well-known as a relaxation technique, but the HCI Lab of the University of Udine has tried to use it for the opposite purpose: making people anxious. The technique, described by a paper in the November 2014 issue of the Interacting with Computers journal, exploits heartbeat detection. While users navigated a 3D world, the computer detected and played their actual heartbeat (users were not told it was theirs) in the audio background of the virtual world. At a couple of times during the experience, the application artificially increased the frequency of the played heartbeat and then reverted it to the actual one after some seconds. The study described in the paper contrasts the technique with aversive stimuli frequently used in video games when the character gets hurt such as decreasing health bars or increasing the frequency of an heartbeat sound that is not related to the user’s actual heartbeat. The biofeedback-based technique produced much larger (subjective as well as physiological) levels of user anxiety than those classic aversive stimuli.

Submission + - Be it Yogic or Tactical Breathing, mobile apps shown to be effective (elsevier.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: Controlled breathing exercises are used for a variety of purposes including health (for example, reducing anxiety and lowering blood pressure), meditation (for example, Yogic breathing) and military operations (for example,
Tactical Breathing). A growing number of breathing training apps is thus cropping up in on-line stores, but their actual effectiveness had never been evaluated. The Computers in Human Behavior journal has now published
the first comparative study of breathing training apps . Researchers have first surveyed the available apps, identifying three main types. Many breathing training apps limit themselves to play audio instructions files, while others attempt to use the graphics capabilities of smartphones to provide visual instructions. Typical visual interfaces either use an animated element such as a sphere that inflates and deflates as the user’s lungs should do or they visualize the entire breathing pattern moving over a time axis (see Figures 1 and 2 in the paper). The study evaluated the effectiveness of the three types of apps both objectively by measuring respiratory patterns of users and subjectively by asking them to rate the apps on different scales. Results show that the studied breathing training apps are effective in supporting users, especially when traditional audio instructions are augmented with an animated visualization of the entire breathing pattern moving over time.

Submission + - Empathy for virtual characters studied with fMRI brain imaging

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: A novel brain imaging study published by the prestigious Neuroimage journal sheds light on different reactions that players’ brains display when they meet a virtual character in a game world. While their head was inside a fMRI machine, participants played an interactive virtual experience in which they had to survive a serious fire emergency in a building by reaching an exit as soon as possible. However, when they finally arrived at the exit, they also found a virtual character trapped under an heavy cabinet, begging them for help. Some participants chose not to help the character and took the exit, while others stopped to help although the fire became more and more serious and moving away the cabinet required considerable time. Functional brain imaging showed activation of very different brain areas of players when they met the character. When there was an increased functional connectivity of the brain salience network, which suggests an enhanced sensitivity to the threatening situation and potential danger, players ignored the character screams and went for the exit. In those players who helped the character, there was an engagement of the medial prefrontal and temporo-parietal cortices, which in the neuroscience literature are associated with the human ability of taking the perspective of other individuals and making altruistic choices. The paper concludes by emphasizing how virtual worlds can be a salient and ecologically valid stimulus for modern social neuroscience.

Submission + - The Placebo Effect occurs with Computer Applications too

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: In medicine, it is well-known that sugar pills sometimes produce the same effects as real drugs (Placebo Effect). But could that happen with computers too? Can it be that the things a computer application claims to do are “all in our mind” and the app is actually a sham? The first scientific study of the Placebo Effect in computing, just published by the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies , gives an affirmative answer. The experiment considered affective computing, that is those fancy applications that claim to know user’s emotions by detecting physiological parameters with sensors. Researchers took two well-known affective computing systems and used them to control in real-time the state of an avatar that looked more and more nervous as users’ stress level increased, and more and more relaxed as it decreased. But they also considered a third system in which, unbeknown to users, the sensors were disconnected from the computer and the avatar state was controlled by a random stream of physiological data instead of the real user’s data. Results show that participants believed that the sham application was able to display their stress level. Even worse, only one of the two (costly) affective computing systems produced better results than the placebo. This suggests that evaluations of such novel computer applications should include also a placebo condition, as it is routinely done in medicine but not yet in computer science.

Submission + - Game Characters controlled by Player's Emotions (youtube.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: As the player feels inner anger rising, the in-game character gets angry too and starts shouting and smashing things. Then, the player relaxes and the game character calms down and smiles. This is the kind of game control supported by a system demonstrated in a video released today by the Human-Computer Interaction Lab of the University of Udine. The system detects player's emotional state by using physiological sensors to measure player's skin conductance, facial muscles activity and cardiac parameters. It has been used to build gamified relaxation training and stress inoculation training applications.

Slashdot Top Deals

The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong -- until the next person quits or is fired.

Close