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“I'm in his belly!”: Children's Responses to Different Types of Characters in Virtual Reality

Immersive technology, such as virtual reality (VR), has become more integrated in children's lives transforming how they experience education, medical treatment, and entertainment. In VR, children are likely to engage with interactive and socially real characters. To examine children's experience of virtual characters in VR, we studied 5-to 9-year old's (N= 25) spontaneous reactions towards three virtual character types (human, anthropomorphized fictional Muppet, animal). Results showed children engaged in four major behavioral interactions: they tried to touch the characters, embodied the characters, talked directly to the characters, and referred to themselves in regard to the virtual environment. These results suggest that children test concepts of realism through touch and verbalizations and physically examine social boundaries. Additionally, children consider self-representation while in a virtual environment. We discuss the implications of these results for future work and provide design considerations when creating VR content with and for children.