Sleep problems are strongly linked to anxiety, but the psychological mechanisms underpinning this relationship are poorly understood. In this pre-registered study, we combined virtual reality, psychophysiology and multidimensional experience sampling to test the hypothesis that sleep deprivation disrupts emotional adaptation to sustained or resolving threat, giving rise to a heightened state of anxiety. Following a night of restful sleep or total sleep deprivation, healthy young adults navigated an immersive virtual world that alternated between ambiguously threatening and non-threatening contexts. Despite initial increases in emotional arousal, sleep-rested individuals quickly downregulated affective responses to ambiguous threat, reflecting efficient adaptation to the aversive virtual environment. Sleep-deprived individuals, by contrast, were unable to overturn elevated arousal responses, and exhibited a breakdown of goal-orientated, emotional control. Interestingly, resting heart rate variability, an index of affective regulatory capacity, mitigated arousal responses to ambiguous threat after sleep deprivation. These findings suggest that impaired adaptation to prolonged threat may represent a key mechanistic pathway linking insufficient sleep to anxiety.

Emotional stimuli (e.g. words, images) are often remembered better than neutral stimuli. However, little is known about how memory is affected by an environmentally induced emotional state (without any overtly emotional occurrences) - the focus of this study. Participants were randomly assigned to discovery (n = 305) and replication (n = 306) subsamples and viewed a desktop virtual environment before rating their emotions and completing objective (i.e. item, temporal-order, duration) and subjective (e.g. vividness, sensory detail, coherence) memory measures. In both samples, a Partial Least Squares Correlation analysis showed that an emotional state characterised by high negative emotion (i.e. threat, fear, anxiety) and arousal was reliably associated with better memory in both objective (i.e. item) and subjective (i.e. vividness and sensory detail) domains. No reliable associations were observed for any temporal memory measures (objective or subjective). Thus, an environmentally induced state of negative emotion corresponds with enhanced memory for indices of episodic memory pertaining to "what" happened, but not necessarily "when" it happened.

Affect-adaptive video games are increasingly concerned with changing game material based on the emotional states of player to best elicit the optimal experience. However, conceptual uncertainties and unreliable methodologies make this process currently difficult and results inconclusive. Here we present a methodological approach to explicitly test mapping assumptions between in-game variables, player input, and subjective experience to build affect-adaptive video games. In Experiment 1, 161 participants played through a newly developed 2D action arcade game. Their data was used to identify associations between game input, presented material, and affective valence. Results made it possible to identify two potential pathways for emotion adaptation which were implemented and evaluated in Experiment 2 (N = 158) against a non-adaptive version of the same game. The player-based emotional adaptation showed a significant increase in self-reported valence compared to the control condition, providing evidence for the utility of the process.

The development of believable, natural, and interactive digital artificial agents is a field of growing interest. Theoretical uncertainties and technical barriers present considerable challenges to the field, particularly with regards to developing agents that effectively simulate human emotions. Large language models (LLMs) might address these issues by tapping common patterns in situational appraisal. In three empirical experiments, this study tests the capabilities of LLMs to solve emotional intelligence tasks and to simulate emotions. It presents and evaluates a new Chain-of-Emotion architecture for emotion simulation within video games, based on psychological appraisal research. Results show that it outperforms control LLM architectures on a range of user experience and content analysis metrics. This study therefore provides early evidence of how to construct and test affective agents based on cognitive processes represented in language models.

Individuals living and working in dangerous settings (e.g., first responders and military personnel) make complex decisions amidst serious threats. However, controlled studies on decision-making under threat are limited given obvious ethical concerns. Here, we embed a complex decision-making task within a threatening, immersive virtual environment. Based on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a paradigm widely used to study complex decision-making, the task requires participants to make a series of choices to escape a collapsing building. In Study 1 we demonstrate that, as with the traditional IGT, participants learn to make advantageous decisions over time and that their behavioural data can be described by reinforcement-learning based computational models. In Study 2 we created threatening and neutral versions of the environment. In the threat condition, participants performed worse, taking longer to improve from baseline and scoring lower through the final trials. Computational modelling further revealed that participants in the threat condition were more responsive to short term rewards and less likely to perseverate on a given choice. These findings suggest that when threat is integral to decision-making, individuals make more erratic choices and focus on short term gains. They furthermore demonstrate the utility of virtual environments for making threat integral to cognitive tasks.

Along with the technological advancements of virtual reality over the years, has come the emergence of Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR), where immersive 360-degree video approaches the high-quality found in feature film. Extensive research has been done on embodiment and presence in relation to Virtual Reality (VR), however, there is a lack of existing literature on the narrative effects of embodiment and perspective in narrative VR films. Exploring the concept of viewer embodiment and its connection to the cinematic concept of narrative perspective, we conduct a review of literature in relation to CVR and flat screen cinema, selecting five CVR films to conduct an analysis of how cinematic techniques for establishing perspective and embodiment can be translated from flat screen cinema. Considering embodiment and perspective in CVR, we propose a spectrum of embodiment between extreme distancing from and extreme identification with characters in the narrative. Areas for future exploration are considered in light of the lack of research in this area.

Affect-adaptive games gained in popularity over the last years in human computer interactions studies, promising potential benefits for player experience, performance, and even health. It is however not yet clear how affective games are being evaluated, what the precise effects are, and how they are based on emotion theoretical concepts that are still not universally agreed upon. This systematic review investigated these questions by analysing relevant high-quality evaluation studies of the effect of affect-adaptive video games on various outcomes in regards to their effects, theoretical assumptions, and methodologies. Out of 3,930 papers, 26 studies were included based on preregistered inclusion and exclusion criteria. A high variance regarding theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches was observed, as well as an overall poor methodological rigour, leading to the conclusion that more work is needed in constructing better methodological standards for game evaluation studies and theoretical considerations when developing and testing affect-adaptive video games.

Emotionally evocative games hold great potential for both industry and our basic understanding about human affect. The question of how best games elicit and respond to player emotion brings together research from psychology, design, and human-computer interaction (HCI). However, there is much confusion regarding the nature of emotions, emotional game-player interaction, and the process of creating emotional games. This article reviews important work from relevant fields to provide an interdisciplinary model that integrates current theories and highlights conceptual gaps for relevant fields. Based on this model, we propose a methodological framework that provides a step-by-step process of developing an emotion-adaptive game. This framework is open to different models of emotion, and its modular nature allows games to adapt to developments in the science of emotion and technological innovations in emotion detection. Together, the theoretical overview and framework can help reduce the confusion that surrounds creating and researching emotions in games.

Threatening environments can be unpredictable in many different ways. The nature of threats, their timing, and their locations in a scene can all be uncertain, even when one is acutely aware of being at risk. Prior research demonstrates that both temporal unpredictability and spatial uncertainty of threats elicit a distinctly anxious psychological response. In the paradigm presented here, we further explore other facets of ambiguous threat via an environment in which there are no concrete threats, predictable or otherwise, but which nevertheless elicits a building sense of danger. By incorporating both psychological research and principles of emotional game design, we constructed this world and then tested its effects in three studies. In line with our goals, participants experienced the environment as creepy and unpredictable. Their subjective and physiological response to the world rose and fell in line with the presentation of ambiguously threatening ambient cues. Exploratory analyses further suggest that this ambiguously threatening experience influenced memory for the virtual world and its underlying narrative. Together the data demonstrate that naturalistic virtual worlds can effectively elicit a multifaceted experience of ambiguous threat with subjective and cognitive consequences.

This paper presents the findings of the Within the Walls of York Gaol, an interdisciplinary and collaborative practice-based research project which was established to examine the intersection between emerging forms of immersive media, game design, and contemporary archaeological exhibition design. The project was a collaboration between researchers and practitioners at York Museums Trust, The University of York, and the University of Glasgow and used co-design methods to design and produce two immersive installations in the prison cells at York Castle Museum in collaboration with community groups. The project sought to re-think the role of the museum within regional creative economies and to argue for the importance of the regional museum as a hub for digital design and innovation. Through innovative forms of collaborative research practice the project was able to develop new understandings of the ways in which collaborative approaches to the design and development of interactive digital media can be used to build skilled communities of practice around regional museums. The project took a critical stance to the use of immersive media technologies and led to the development of innovative and highly distinctive digital immersive installations which emerged in response to the specific opportunities and design requirements of museums and their audiences. This paper will set out the findings of this project as well as identify new creative directions and new forms of collaborative design practice which can be adopted and adapted for use across the museum sector.

In this half-day workshop, we will explore the ethics of Virtual Reality (VR) through conversations framed around design fictions. Affordable head-mounted displays (HMDs) and accessible VR content are now within reach of large audiences, yet many of VR's most urgent challenges remain under-explored. In addition to the many known unknowns (e.g. how do we manage sensory conflicts and spatial limitations in VR?), there are many more unknown unknowns (e.g. what kinds of psychological, social and cultural impact will VR provoke?). By bringing together diverse scenarios from workshop participants, and bespoke design fictions created specifically to explore the ethics of VR, we will facilitate a rich discussion that will inform the development of three high-fidelity design fictions that will be used to explore the ethics of VR in future workshops, including one in Bristol, UK in November 2019, part of the Virtual Realities Immersive Documentary Encounters project.

Participatory Video (PV) is emerging as a rich and valuable method for monitoring and evaluating (M & E) projects in the International Development sector. Although shown to be useful for engaging communities within short-term monitoring exercises or promotion, PV in these contexts presents significant complexity and logistical challenges for sustained uptake by Development organizations. In this paper, we present Our Story, a digitally mediated work flow iteratively designed and deployed on initiatives in Indonesia and Namibia. Developed in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), it supports end-to-end PV production in the field, and was specifically developed to make PV a more sustainable tool for monitoring. We discuss and evaluate Our Story, reporting on how by lowering skills barriers for facilitators and leveraging consumer technology, PV can be delivered at scale.

Viking VR is a Virtual Reality exhibit through which viewers can experience the sights and sounds of a 9th Century Viking encampment. Created as part of a major museum exhibition, the experience was developed by an interdisciplinary team consisting of artists, archaeologists, curators and researchers. In this paper, approaches to the design of authentic, informative and compelling VR experiences for Cultural Heritage contexts are discussed. We also explore issues surrounding interaction design for the long-term deployment of VR experiences in museums and discuss the challenges of VR authoring workflows for interdisciplinary teams.

Virtual reality presents a new set of challenges and opportunities for both engineers and neuroscientists. Here we provide an overview of a programme designed by a group of psychologists, neuroscientists and VR specialists to address some of the most outstanding issues in the field ranging from the very low-level (for example, how the brain processed motion-in-depth signals generated by stereoscopic display devices) to the very high level (how virtual environments can lead to a sense of immersion and emotional engagement). We present data from psychophysical, electrophysiological and neuroimaging experiments and explain how different research methodologies can be applied to different problems in the field of VR/AR. We end by describing an open-source, extensible software package for studying issues in VR that can interface to common laboratory measurement equipment and discussing future directions and challenges facing the neuroscience and VR engineering communities.

Modern TV viewing has moved away from the traditional shared living room and sofa experience towards consumption on an ever-evolving set of devices, in a variety of locations, as individuals, or as physically co-located and geographically dispersed groups. However, the consumption of broadcast media still remains a relatively linear experience, fixed at production time. Significant interest has surfaced within the broadcast industry into the production of non-linear, context specific forms of media presentation. The design of these interactive and reconfigurable televisual experiences at a public facing level requires a user-centered approach. Through the collaboration of researchers, designers, practitioners and stakeholders within the television industry, this workshop will provide a focused day for the design of future reconfigurable televisual experiences.

Although many common tools of media making such as video cameras have become more accessible in recent years, many remain inaccessible. Cinematography, lighting and sound-recording equipment for example can be prohibitively expensive to obtain, complex to configure, and/or require specialist knowledge to operate effectively. These barriers can prevent non-professionals who want to produce high-quality media from being able to. Cinehack is an ongoing project to research ways to overcome these barriers. In this paper, we specifically report on Cinehack: Cape Town, a participatory media making project. By co-producing hip hop videos within a community for whom media making is often a 'means-to-an-end', we were able gain insights into the kinds of support needed to enable high quality media making by non-professionals. Specifically, we highlight ways to meet users' needs by embracing informal codes of practice via experimental making and peer-support.

Crowdsourced video is now a viable tool with which broadcasters and communities alike can produce authentic, high quality video content. However, the literacy, language, skills and tools to produce a documentary through commissioning content are currently difficult to acquire. We explore opening up the documentary film commissioning process to community contributors by developing a framework which instructs, guides and informs non-professional contributors in capturing the content required for making videos. Through the results of an in-the-wild deployment we discuss how our framework scaffolds content creation, the capture of high quality footage and coordination amongst teams of contributors. We then discuss how this can inform community media creation in the future.

The emergence of participatory, on-demand and interactive media is changing the media production landscape. Producing interactive media is often more complex than creating traditional linear films, resulting in increased pressure for production teams. In this paper we explore what implications this has for cast and crew who participate in the production of such new media. We explore how collaborative technologies can support creative practitioners, within these challenging settings. We present TryFilm, a collaborative editing system, designed by the authors and deployed during an interactive film shoot by a small film company featuring a cast of early career actors.

We present "archival liveness" as a concept in design and the Digital Humanities and describe its development within a Research Through Design process. Working with a newly acquired archive of contemporary poetry we produced designs that both manifested and "geared in to" [Durrant 2011] [Gurwitsch 1979] the temporal rhythms of the work and infrastructure of archiving. Drawing on user-centred work with participants, often poets themselves, we focused on marginalia as a material feature of the archive, developing a drawing machine and live Twitter bot. Our work addresses institutional concerns for outreach and engagement while also acknowledging and exploiting the inevitably incomplete or live character of archival collections. For designers working with digital archives, we demonstrate the pragmatic and critical value of liveness as a focus of the design process.