CRII: HCC: RUI: Toward Understanding of Virtual Reality Sickness in Children

近年来，虚拟现实(VR)技术变得更加负担得起，也更容易为不同的人群所接受。VR用户面临的最大挑战之一是虚拟现实恶心，也被称为晕车，用户会出现眼睛疲劳、头痛、出汗、头晕、定向障碍、眩晕和恶心等症状。尽管多年来人们一直在成人中研究导致晕车的因素以及减少晕车的方法，但儿童越来越频繁地使用VR，他们的快速心理发展可能会影响他们体验晕车的机制以及症状的类型和严重程度。该项目将通过为儿童创建有效的晕屏测量方法，并比较成人和儿童之间晕屏的严重程度和诱因，来调查儿童和成人之间的这些可能的差异。实现这些目标将使该团队能够制定指导方针，为儿童开发安全的VR内容，从而扩大能够从VR体验中受益的儿童人口。这项研究是第一批对儿童晕机进行彻底调查的研究之一。晕车的原因仍然存在争议，对它们如何影响儿童的研究严重不足。此外，常见的用于评估晕车的工具，如基于文本的模拟器呕吐问卷(SSQ)，可能不适合儿童使用，因为它的一些问题(如头部饱满、胃部知觉等)可能不适合儿童使用。可能会让孩子们难以理解。这个项目的第一个目标是实现一个儿童友好的SSQ，通过用症状的动画增强SSQ来利用儿童的视觉技能。视觉问卷与基于文本的SSQ的有效性将作为第一个目标的一部分进行研究，并发布给其他VR研究人员和设计师使用。第二个目标是比较儿童和成人之间晕厥的主观(即SSQ)和生理(包括心率变异性、脑电和皮肤电反应)指标。最后一个目标是调查虚拟环境中引发儿童晕屏的因素。对不同虚拟现实环境设计条件下大脑活动的事件相关电位分析将确定它们对网络病症的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have become more affordable and accessible to a diverse population in recent years. One of the biggest challenges for VR users is virtual reality sickness, also known as cybersickness, in which users experience symptoms including eyestrain, headache, sweating, fullness of head, disorientation, vertigo, and nausea. Although factors that cause cybersickness, and ways to reduce it, have been studied for many years in adults, children are increasingly frequent VR users whose rapid psychological development may affect both the mechanisms by which they experience cybersickness and the type and severity of the symptoms. This project will investigate these possible differences between children and adults through creating effective measures of cybersickness for children and comparing the severity and drivers of cybersickness between adults and children. Achieving these objectives will allow the team to develop guidelines for developing safe VR content for children that will expand the population of children who are able to benefit from VR experiences. This research is among the first to investigate cybersickness in children thoroughly. The causes of cybersickness are still debatable, and how they affect children is severely understudied. Further, common instruments for assessing cybersickness, such as the text-based simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ), may not be suitable for use with children, as some of its questions (e.g., fullness of head, stomach awareness, etc.) can be difficult for children to comprehend. The first objective of this project is to implement a child-friendly SSQ that leverages children's visual skills by augmenting the SSQ with animations of the symptoms. The effectiveness of the visual questionnaire versus the text-based SSQ will be studied as a part of the first objective and released for use by other VR researchers and designers. The second objective is to compare both subjective (i.e., the SSQ) and physiological (including rate variability, electroencephalograms, and galvanic skin response) measures of cybersickness between children and adults. The last objective is to investigate the factors in a virtual environment that trigger cybersickness in children. An event-related potential analysis of the brain activity in different VR environmental design conditions will identify their effects on cybersickness.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.