VR Empathy Game: Creating Empathic VR Environments for Children Based on a Social Constructivist Learning Approach

This paper discusses applications of the Social Constructivist learning approach in the design of virtual reality (VR) games to promote empathy in children. Early Childhood Development (ECD) research provides guidelines for engaging children in empathy development activities (i.e., learning through interactions, reflective activities, role-taking, dialogical inquiry), which are grounded in Social Constructivist Learning Theory. VR researchers suggest the affordances of VR technologies to create immersive learning experiences for empathy development in children, but this research is still at its early stages. This research aimed to explore ways to engage children in empathetic interactions with VR characters based on social constructivist principles. We developed a VR Empathy Game and conducted a qualitative study with 14 children (6-9 years old). Based on the thematic analysis, we found gender differences between the gameplay experiences of girls and boys. Girls were more interested in interacting with VR characters and, as a result, spent more time than boys asking them questions, listening to them, and using the role-taking features to explore the game world from the characters’ perspective. We suggest a follow-up research study exploring ways to better scaffold empathetic experiences for boys.