Virtual Family Room is an immersive virtual space that allows physically separated military families (e.g., on deployment) to interact with each other through avatars as if they were together, sharing the same space. Preliminary analyses indicated that Virtual Family Room could help maintain family cohesion and address the difficulties introduced by physical distance by encouraging families to continue their rituals and shared experiences. The current study aimed to provide new insights on the efficacy of Virtual Family Room and on the impact that the Virtual Family Room has on family communication practices among military families. The study also demonstrated the feasibility of using the Virtual Family Room over time, outside of the laboratory, in a naturalistic setting. A total of ten military families with children (between ages 6-18) were recruited through the National Military Family Association and asked to communicate as often as possible with Virtual Family Room (via the VR headsets) for approximately 8 weeks. After each interaction session, families completed online diary entries. The online diaries included prompts to discuss their communication experiences within the Virtual Family Room and the impact these experiences have on their family relationship. The questionnaire results indicated that respondents felt a significantly high level of shared reality, positive communication, and cohesion with family members. Open-ended responses indicated that the quality of the experience varied between location and internet quality. However, those that were able to overcome technological hurdles together as a family expressed close and fun bonding experiences within the Virtual Family Room. Additionally, families were more likely to engage in creative and exploratory activities with subsequent usage. Together, these results indicated the ways in which virtual spaces can help sustain cohesion and well-being when families are physically separated. However, there are still technical challenges to broadly implementing VR for family communication.
Keywords
AVATAR, ENVIRONMENTS, IMMERSIVE, VIRTUAL
Additional Keywords
Family Communication, Virtual Reality