Virtual reality as a tool for promoting reading via enhanced narrative absorption and empathy

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Reading fiction is beneficial for various social skills, although reading has become less and less popular with younger generations. This study investigated whether reading a chapter of a fictional story in virtual reality (VR) can make the reading experience more appealing and increase intention to read the story further. A between-subject experiment (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic> = 83) was conducted to compare the effect of a printed book and a VR reading environment on narrative absorption, empathy with fictional characters, and intention to read. The results show that VR enhances intention to read, via a serial mediation of transportation into the story world and affective empathy. These findings indicate that VR can be effectively exploited for promoting reading.</jats:p>

StoryVR: A Virtual Reality App for Enhancing Reading

“…The theoretical assumption at the basis of StoryVR is that the level of immersion perceived when reading or listening to a story can be enhanced through environmental propping [16], that is the process for which features of the reading environment can foster readers' transportation into the story world, and empathy, eliciting a higher aesthetic pleasure. This hypothesis has been experimentally confirmed, showing that the perceived shift of embodiment from the actual world to the VR space facilitates a further shift of perceived embodiment into the story world [24]. The same study also found that VR can effectively be used to promote reading, since people who read in VR were more willing to continue reading.…”

VRDoc: Gaze-based Interactions for VR Reading Experience

“…While the study identified that readers preferred this experience to that of reading on paper, laptop, or mobile devices, this did not test or improve reading in the immersive system but showed that users enjoyed seeing ancillary material in the infinite margins surrounding documents. Pianzola et al investigated whether reading fiction in VR, having an immersive background, and having the ability to move your head to view texts with different orientations, affect users' absorption in the story [31]. The results show that VR enhanced users' intention to read and their affective empathy.…”

“…As we look forward to a future of an immersive infinitely collaborative virtual office space, we cannot ignore the importance of a seamless reading experience being part of this virtual environment. Currently, reading in VR is considered difficult if not impossible in a sustainable way [29,31,34,36,42]. Users typically refer to many hardware-related issues with respect to the current displays which are unable to satisfy the fastidious requirements of the human visual system, including high pixel density, a large number of pixels, wide field-of-view (FOV), and a high refresh rate.…”

Ieder zijn eigen Saïdjah en Adinda? De narratieve betrokkenheid van vwo-scholieren bij verschillende bewerkingen van Multatuli’s Max Havelaar (1860)

“…Zo bleek bijvoorbeeld dat participanten die een fragment uit Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) in een virtual reality-omgeving lazen een hogere intentie hadden om verder te lezen dan participanten die het fragment op papier lazen. 12 Dit roept de vraag op of ook andere factoren van invloed kunnen zijn op de intentie om een fragment uit een literair-historisch werk verder te lezen, zoals taalgebruik en modaliteit (gebruik van beeld).…”