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This study examined the role of display size and mode in increasing users' sense of being together with and of their psychological immersion in a virtual character. Using a high-resolution three-dimensional virtual character, this study employed a 2 · 2 (stereoscopic mode vs. monoscopic mode · actual human size vs. small size display) factorial design in an experiment with 144 participants randomly assigned to each condition. Findings showed that stereoscopic mode had a significant effect on both users' sense of being together and psychological immersion. However, display size affected only the sense of being together. Furthermore, display size was not found to moderate the effect of stereoscopic mode.

Virtual reality exposure therapy offers the possibility of tackling social anxiety in an efficient, safe and controlled manner. A key question, however, is what is the level of realism required in virtual environments to ensure the environment is effective in helping the participant to deal with their anxiety. One concern which affects a lot of people from all walks of life is the fear of a job interview. In this paper we investigate the relationship between anxiety and varying levels of realistic fidelity. We recruited 60 volunteers and studied their anxiety levels via randomised block design, where each block was exposed to a different level of fidelity of the virtual avatars: realistic 3D human avatar, cartoon-like 3D avatar, and human photographs. We measured the social anxiety of all participants via a measure of eyes avoidance behaviour. Our main findings are that the participants exhibited more anxiety in accordance with the attitude of virtual avatars than the avatar's level of realism.

In this study we investigated the effects of gender (male vs. female) and nonverbal sensitivity (high vs. low) on game experience after playing a first-person shooter videogame. The results of Experiment 2 (n = 50) showed that participants with high nonverbal sensitivity experienced more positive valence and a greater level of arousal than participants with low nonverbal sensitivity.The biological sex of the participants became non-significant, after taking into consideration nonverbal sensitivity. The results of a mediation analysis showed that the emotional valence and arousal mediated the effects of nonverbal sensitivity on the enjoyment of the videogame.Implications with respect to a new understanding of gender preference for certain genres of videogames by identifying specific gender-related skills are discussed.

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