CHS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Designing Virtual Worlds for Children - A Developmental Study of How Children Act, Perceive, and Reason Spatially

虚拟环境可以革命性地告诉我们年轻人对三维(3D)对象的思维方式，这被称为空间推理。空间推理和思考是STEM领域成功的基本组成部分，对我国未来的成功至关重要。此外，在STEM课堂上采取行动或“边做边学”也有积极的效果。虚拟环境是促进基于行动的学习的理想选择，因为它们可以灵活地创建3D、身临其境的、可访问的和交互的空间，可以模拟从简单到复杂的各种空间推理技能的许多情景。此前，虚拟环境技术不容易被关键年龄的儿童使用，以发展空间推理。这个由计算机科学家和认知科学家组成的团队将全面了解儿童如何在虚拟环境中感知和行为，以及如何在现实世界中理解和应用他们的空间推理能力。利用这项工作的成果，虚拟环境的设计者应该能够有效地实施提供边做边学的技术，并利用行动对认知的积极影响。STEM学习在很大程度上依赖于空间思维，而虚拟环境为这种学习提供了一种自然的工具。儿童是STEM学习者的关键群体，但由于以前无法接触到这项技术，研究人员才刚刚开始调查他们在沉浸式虚拟空间中的空间感知和推理。该团队的研究计划将为理解儿童如何在身临其境的虚拟环境中感知、行为和推理空间奠定基础。该团队将探索来自虚拟环境的自我化身形式的移动和反馈如何影响儿童的感知-行动和空间学习。在这些努力中，我们将基于年龄、性别和空间能力特征等因素来考察儿童群体之间的个体差异。这些差异将被分析，以得出关于如何设计虚拟环境和定制主动学习方法以最大限度地造福不同发展阶段的儿童的可行建议。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 environments can revolutionize how we inform young people's thinking about 3 dimensional (3D) objects, which is known as spatial reasoning. Spatial reasoning and thinking are fundamental components of success in STEM fields and critically important to our nation's future success. Moreover, there is a positive effect of action or "learning-by-doing" in STEM classrooms. Virtual environments are ideal for promoting action-based learning because of their flexibility in creating 3D, immersive, accessible, and interactive spaces that can simulate many contexts across a spectrum of skills in spatial reasoning, from simple to complex. Previously, virtual environment technology was not easily usable by children at critical ages for the development of spatial reasoning. This team, consisting of computer scientists and cognitive scientists, will develop a comprehensive understanding of how children perceive and act in virtual environments, and how their spatial reasoning capabilities can be understood and applied in the real world. Using the results of this work, designers of virtual environments should be able to effectively implement technologies that provide learning-by-doing and harness the positive effects of action on cognition. Much of STEM learning relies on spatial thinking, and virtual environments provide a natural tool to facilitate such learning. Children are a key group of STEM learners, but researchers have only begun to investigate their spatial perception and reasoning in immersive virtual spaces due to previous inaccessibility of the technology. The team's research program will develop a basis for understanding how children perceive, act, and reason about space in immersive virtual environments. The team will explore how both locomotion and feedback from the virtual environment in the form of self-avatars impact perception-action and spatial learning in children. In these endeavors, we will examine individual differences among groups of children based on factors such as age, gender, and characterizations of spatial abilities. These differences will be analyzed to derive actionable recommendations on how to design virtual environments and customize active learning methods to best benefit children at different development stages.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.