Space—A Virtual Frontier: How to Design and Evaluate a Virtual Reality Experience of the Overview Effect

Stepanova, Ekaterina R.; Quesnel, Denise; Riecke, Bernhard E.

doi:10.3389/fdigh.2019.00007

Cited by 27 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 111 publications

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“…In this study, a new simulation for viewing Earth from space was used, embedded in an educational program that replicates an astronaut's journey to space. The SpaceBuzz simulation proved to be effective in inducing both awe and the overview effect and thus adheres to the recommendations made by Stepanova et al (2019a). It opens doors to use this simulation for future research on the same topic, and it confirms that the visuals were sufficiently vast and beautiful and the audio was sufficiently supportive to create a feeling of awe in the participants.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Creating Ambassadors of Planet Earth: The Overview Effect in K12 Education

2020

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The overview effect is the commonly reported experience of astronauts viewing planet Earth from space and the subsequent reflection on and processing of this experience. The overview effect is associated with feelings of awe, self-transcendence, and a change of perspective and identity that manifest themselves in taking steps toward protecting the fragile ecosystem. In the current study, we investigated whether the overview effect can be obtained in school children when simulated using virtual reality (VR) and whether the effect has a positive impact on learning gains. Using questionnaires and attention data in an existing simulation environment used in the school system, we showed that the VR simulation elicits an overview effect experience. Moreover, the experience yields learning gains in the domain of astrophysics. These findings are in line with past evidence regarding the positive impact of awe on learning and can be used to support further investigations of the relation between the overview effect and behavioral changes, specifically for educational purposes.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Creating Ambassadors of Planet Earth: The Overview Effect in K12 Education

2020

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“…Film audio tracks are more powerful than music in eliciting piloerection, a common marker of aesthetic chills 31 . The visual stimulus was a 4 K satellite view of planet Earth, a stimulus known to trigger awe and the overview effects likely to trigger chills 27 , 35 , 36 . As a voice over, we used a speech excerpt of Charlie Chaplin from the movie ‘The Great Dictator’ accompanied by a Hans Zimmer musical soundtrack.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are most often elicited by music 23 , 24 , but also poetry 25 , scientific insights 26 or social rituals 26 . These events have deep significance to individuals, often related to life changing experience such as the overview effect 27 and transformative experiences 28 , 29 , and are sometimes accompanied by tears 29 . In terms of physiology, chills have a specific cardiac signature 30 and are primarily accompanied by an increase of phasic electrodermal activity and respiration depth 31 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Augmenting aesthetic chills using a wearable prosthesis improves their downstream effects on reward and social cognition

Haar

Jain

Schoeller

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Previous studies on aesthetic chills (i.e., psychogenic shivers) demonstrate their positive effects on stress, pleasure, and social cognition. We tested whether we could artificially enhance this emotion and its downstream effects by intervening on its somatic markers using wearable technology. We built a device generating cold and vibrotactile sensations down the spine of subjects in temporal conjunction with a chill-eliciting audiovisual stimulus, enhancing the somatosensation of cold underlying aesthetic chills. Results suggest that participants wearing the device experienced significantly more chills, and chills of greater intensity. Further, these subjects reported sharing the feelings expressed in the stimulus to a greater degree, and felt more pleasure during the experience. These preliminary results demonstrate that emotion prosthetics and somatosensory interfaces offer new possibilities of modulating human emotions from the bottom-up (body to mind). Future challenges will include testing the device on a larger sample and diversifying the type of stimuli to account for negatively valenced chills and intercultural differences. Interoceptive technologies offer a new paradigm for affective neuroscience, allowing controlled intervention on conscious feelings and their downstream effects on higher-order cognition.

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“…By experimenting with those elements it is possible to elicit "aha" moments that influence the attractiveness and innovativeness of the experiences (Carbon and Leder, 2005;Carbon, 2015). Recent work has reported on such aesthetic emotional experiences in the context of space travel by emphasizing the opportunity to recreate such awe-inspiring experiences with technologies such as virtual reality (Stepanova et al, 2019). The authors refer to the overview effect (i.e., the fact that seeing the Earth from a unique perspective-from space, leaves them with a unique feeling of awe, which could lead to deep changes in their perspective about the world) that was reported by many space travelers.…”

Section: Opportunity For Designing Eating Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%