Reading 4

Posted on by

For class 2/24/14
Post Comments by 11:59 pm on 2/23/14

Virtual Superheroes: Using Superpowers in Virtual Reality to Encourage Prosocial Behavior

Robin S. Rosenberg, Shawnee L. Baughman, and Jeremy N. Bailenson
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559425/

This is a press release that describes the project for a more general audience

http://www.livescience.com/26752-superheroes-boost-helpful-behavior.html

Astrojumper: Motivating Exercise with an Immersive Virtual Reality Exergame
Samantha Finkelstein*, Andrea Nickel, Zachary Lipps, Tiffany Barnes, Zachary Wartell and Evan A. Suma
http://people.ict.usc.edu/~suma/papers/finkelstein-presence2011.pdf

Related media:


Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZZmommFnBE 


Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0slLnGhcEC4 

 

Discussion 1 (Pick 3)

  1. What do you think of the overall setup of the experiment?  Do you agree with the approach?
  2. What do you think of the metrics used in the study?  Do you think these provide an adequate measure of prosocial behavior?
  3. If you were going to change something in the experiment what would it be and why?
  4. What other prosocial behaviors would you like to test?  Would you design your experiment in the same way?
  5. You may find a term or topic that you are unfamiliar with.  If you would like to, do a little research on the subject (wikipedia would be a good place to start). Briefly describe your understanding of this concept and how confident you are about this understanding.
  6. Find a topic that you interesting, dubious, or curious and explain why.

Discussion 2 (Pick 3)

  1. What design decisions do you think were the wisest in the Astrojumper system?  Which decisions do you think could be improved upon?
  2. Do you think using a CAVE was the best VR setup for this system?  Why or why not?
  3. What do you think of the measures used in the experiment?  If you were to add another measure, what would you add? Do you think of the heart rate being monitored when it was?  Do you think this was possibly problematic?
  4. Pick one of the results and briefly discuss why it is interesting to you.
  5. You may find a term or topic that you are unfamiliar with.  If you would like to, do a little research on the subject (wikipedia would be a good place to start). Briefly describe your understanding of this concept and how confident you are about this understanding.
  6. Find a topic that you interesting, dubious, or curious and explain why.