Using virtual experiences of older age: exploring pedagogical and psychological experiences of students

Abstract

Fostering intergenerational empathy is vital for creating an age-friendly society and an important aim for Sport and Exercise Science (SES) degree programmes given that graduates are increasingly entering the healthcare workforce supporting older adults (British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences; BASES, 2018). Interventions to challenge negative stereotypes of ageing, generate empathy for older adults, and help University students gain experience of 'being' an older person have demonstrated mixed success (e.g., Prior & Sargent-Cox, 2014). Recent studies indicate the promise of virtual reality in this context but do not present conclusive evidence for this effect (e.g., Banakou, Kishore, & Slater, 2018). Thus this study explored SES students' responses to virtual experiences of being an older person in a workshop. Participants completed the "Become Victor" module of the FrailtySIM © application, based on real life experience of an older person in their home, and, a University-developed immersive experience of being an older person in a social situation. Fifty-two students completed questionnaires about their experience of "Become Victor" and 15 students were interviewed (12 in 2 focus groups, 3 individually) about their experiences of both simulations. Data indicated that "Become Victor" offered students insight into being an older person that was "eye-opening" and realistic but frustrating and stressful. The social situation effectively simulated the isolation felt by some older people to an extent, but needed to be more interactive. Students felt that the simulations were important for contextualising previously delivered lecture material on older adults. Future workshop iterations will integrate lecture and virtual experiences using opportunities for student reflection on their experiences.

Combatting ageism through virtual embodiment? Using explicit and implicit measures

“…VE has shown promise in increasing empathy and reducing implicit negative attitudes in various domains (Banakou et al, 2016;Hamilton-Giachritsis et al, 2018;Li and Kyung Kim, 2021). In the case of ageism, results have been somewhat equivocal as VE as an older avatar also resulted in slower walking pace (Reinhard et al, 2020) and greater frustration and distress (Hudson et al, 2018). VE also was found ineffective in the face of a concrete explicit threat (Oh et al, 2016).…”

“…The implicit association test is the most prominent measure of implicit attitudes. Response time is measured regarding congruently matched vs. noncongruently matched pictures of young/old faces and positive and negative words in terms of their valence (Hummert et al, 2002). Compared with the IAT, the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT) has a fewer number of trials.…”

“…A different study conducted in the United Kingdom has exposed students to different conditions including VE. Based on qualitative interviews, the authors concluded that students acknowledged the importance of the simulation for contextualizing course materials relevant to old age and that identifying with the experiences of older people fostered frustration and distress among students (Hudson et al, 2018). A different study has found that a VE task is comparable to embodied perspective taking, and both are insufficient to foster positive attitudes towards older people, when intergroup threat is direct and concrete, but when intergroup threat is abstract, VE is preferred to embodied perspective taking (Oh et al, 2016).…”