The impact of virtual reality on the awareness of teenagers to social and emotional experiences of immigrants classmates

The current study examined the use of VR (Virtual Reality) and its affect on the

degree of awareness of 178 seventh and eighth graders to the emotional and social

experiences of a new immigrant during his or her first months in the adoptive country.

Students native to the adoptive country were divided into two groups: an experimental

group, which tried out VR worlds designed to simulate the emotional and social feelings

and experiences of a new immigrant teen, and a control group which viewed a movie on the

same subject. In addition, we have examined another group of teen immigrants who

provided us with a benchmark of the degree of awareness to be measured. Their responses

were compared to those of native teenagers of the adoptive country. All the subjects

responded to an awareness questionnaire before and after the experiment (Sever 1977), and

had a personal interview before and after the experiment as well. The results indicate that

the experience of a VR simulated emotional and social experiences of a recent immigrant

teen has intensified the emotional and social awareness of the experiment group while the

movie intensified the social feelings only in the control group.