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Designing a Multi-user VR Social Activity Space for Social Interaction for People Living with Dementia

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Serious Games (JCSG 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14309))

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Abstract

Dementia is a condition that leads to a gradual decline in executive cognitive functioning over time. Health care professionals use non-pharmacological activities to enrich the lives of people living with dementia (PLWD). Studies show that activities involving social interaction have a positive effect on the cognitive function of PLWD. Studies also show that the distancing limitations brought by the Covid-19 pandemic greatly reduced the number of opportunities for social interaction and negatively affected PLWD. Virtual Reality (VR) is showing promise in research involving PLWD. While PLWD have indicated positive experiences using VR, there is currently a paucity of research into the design and development of a multi-user VR social activity space for PLWD. This paper details the design of an activity based multi-user VR space to support socialization for PLWD. It also outlines a set of experiments to evaluate efficacy from the context of social presence and social interaction within this space.

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Acknowledgements

This work was conducted with the financial support of the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research Training in Digitally-Enhanced Reality (d-real) under Grant No. 18/CRT/6224. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland

    G. Reilly, S. Redfern & A. Brennan

  2. School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland

    G.-M. Muntean

Authors
  1. G. Reilly
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  2. S. Redfern
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  3. G.-M. Muntean
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  4. A. Brennan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to G. Reilly .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Mads Haahr

  2. University of Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    Alberto Rojas-Salazar

  3. TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

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Reilly, G., Redfern, S., Muntean, GM., Brennan, A. (2023). Designing a Multi-user VR Social Activity Space for Social Interaction for People Living with Dementia. In: Haahr, M., Rojas-Salazar, A., Göbel, S. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14309. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_16

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-44750-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-44751-8

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