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. 2021 Dec 16;11(1):24108.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03380-y.

Development of an affective database made of interactive virtual environments

Nicolò Dozio  1 , Federica Marcolin  2 , Giulia Wally Scurati  3 , Francesca Nonis  2 , Luca Ulrich  2 , Enrico Vezzetti  2 , Francesco Ferrise  3
Affiliations

Development of an affective database made of interactive virtual environments

Nicolò Dozio et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Despite the great potential of Virtual Reality (VR) to arouse emotions, there are no VR affective databases available as it happens for pictures, videos, and sounds. In this paper, we describe the validation of ten affective interactive Virtual Environments (VEs) designed to be used in Virtual Reality. These environments are related to five emotions. The testing phase included using two different experimental setups to deliver the overall experience. The setup did not include any immersive VR technology, because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but the VEs were designed to run on stereoscopic visual displays. We collected measures related to the participants' emotional experience based on six discrete emotional categories plus neutrality and we included an assessment of the sense of presence related to the different experiences. The results showed how the scenarios can be differentiated according to the emotion aroused. Finally, the comparison between the two experimental setups demonstrated high reliability of the experience and strong adaptability of the scenarios to different contexts of use.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Details of the affective VR environments used to elicit Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust, and Neutrality.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Participants’ mean rates for the 7 emotional labels in the two experimental setups.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Exp. 1—presence mean rates for each experimental condition.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Comparison between the emotional rates in Exp. 1 and Exp. 2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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