Positive emotions are important for the physical and mental health of elderly adults. Previous research has suggested that the emotion processing mechanisms of elderly adults differ from those of young people. The current study used a mixed-methods approach to explore the emotional impacts of viewing an uplifting 360°v ideos under immersive (using a virtual reality [VR] headset) and nonimmersive (using a smartphone) conditions on elderly populations and young people. In Study 1, we conducted a pre-post treatment betweensubject field experiment (smartphone vs. VR) among 58 seniors (aged 60 years and above) in a community center in Beijing, China. One-on-one semistructured interviews of each participant were conducted after the experiment. In Study 2, we conducted a between-subject laboratory experiment with the same design among college students. The results show that while both VR and smartphone viewing conditions led to a significant positive effect on the self-reported emotions of the college students, only the smartphone viewing condition had a significant impact on the emotional well-being of the elderly participants. For college students, immersive VR had a stronger effect on inducing positive emotions than smartphone, but for elderly people, the smartphone viewing condition was more effective in improving emotional wellbeing than immersive VR. An analysis of the qualitative data from interviewing the elderly participants also revealed a divergence in the acceptance of VR technologies among elderly adults, and the sense of telepresence had both positive and negative effects on the elderly participants' emotions and experiences.

Virtual reality (VR) has been widely applied in medical health areas and the entertainment and tourism industries, in which elderly people are a primary target. However, most studies on VR have focused on how people respond to this new technology and its effects on younger generations. Our study explored the differences in VR experience and acceptance between elderly adults and college students. A mixed method approach including both experiments and in-depth interviews was applied in this study. Our results show that elderly adults reported a higher level of telepresence and stronger emotional responses than young adults in VR viewing regardless of the VR device. The ways in which elderly people processed and evaluated VR content and devices were different from those of young people. Elderly people reported more positive attitudes toward the video they watched than young people, but this did not necessarily lead to more positive attitudes toward the viewing experience.

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Sense of presence and extraneous cognitive load (ECL) are the two psychological effects widely employed to explain the cognitive outcomes caused by high-immersive media (e. g., virtual reality). This study identified the concepts of both technological affordance (i.e., immersion) and the psychological effects of VR learning. It investigated the mechanism by which immersion leads to better or worse communication in the context of art education. We operationalized the concept of immersion into two levels: a high-immersive VR system (HTC VIVE Cosmos) and a low-immersive tablet system (iPad). Through a between-subject experiment, we found that higher immersion not only led to a greater sense of presence but also lowered extraneous cognitive load. Enjoyment and attention increased as a sense of presence rose but were not necessarily predicted by extraneous cognitive load. This study found that sense of presence was a more robust explanatory variable than ECL and that cognitive load could be lower in a high-immersive environment with content specifically designed for VR.

Most of the existing virtual reality (VR) Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) self-instruction training methods are based on low embodied and noninteractive 360-degree videos, and the effects of the highly immersive embodied VR CPR training system lack rigorous experimental verification. In our study, we compare the learning outcomes of self-instruction CPR training based on a highly immersive and interactive VR system (experimental group) with selfinstruction training based on 2D videos (control group) in terms of willingness to perform CPR, knowledge of CPR, self-efficacy and CPR test performances. We conducted a prepost betweengroup experiment in a local college in Yixin, Jiangsu Province, China. Sixty undergraduate students (30 male and 30 female) aged from 18 to 25 were randomly assigned to the video group or the VR group. There were no significant differences in demographic variables and baseline pretest between the two groups. Both groups received training on cardiac compressions and automated external defibrillator (AED) assisted CPR. Our results revealed that both the VR and video methods significantly improved the participants' CPR knowledge, self-efficacy and willingness to perform CPR. Our results showed that the immersive VR group had a significant disadvantage in their grasp of compression depth compared with the non-immersive media group. The correct compression depth of the video group was significantly higher than the VR group, and there was no difference between the two groups in terms of compression speed and full rebound rate. Our study suggested that both self-instruction training based on VR and self-instruction training based on video were effective methods, and the highly immersive and embodied VR method did not achieve better results than the video method.