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Stories can serve as powerful tools for health interventions. Story immersion refers to the experience of being absorbed in a story. This is among the first studies to analyze story immersion's role in health videogames among children by addressing two main questions: Will children be more immersed when the main characters are similar to them? Do i...
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... Preference, Fruit Self-Efficacy, Vegetable Self-Efficacy, and PA Self-Efficacy significantly improved (P values < 0.05), and Intrinsic Motivation for Water marginally improved (P = 0.07) from the baseline ( Table 2). There were no differ- ences in these variables among the three ethnic groups at the baseline level (P values > 0.10) except for Vegetable Self- Efficacy (Hispanic children scored significantly lower than Caucasian and African-American children, P < 0.05). ...
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Objectives African American maternal caregiver support for prevention of childhood obesity may be a factor in implementing, monitoring, and sustaining children’s positive health behaviors. However, little is known about how perceptions of childhood obesity risk factors and health complications influence caregivers’ support of childhood obesity prev...
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... Children received ambiguous faces well when the face shared their own phenotypic features. For example, when a health game character was designed with the facial characteristics of both Black and Latino features, 10-to 12-year-old Black and Latino children had greater game story immersion and better health outcomes than White children (Lu et al., 2012). ...
Characters play an integral role in animated narratives, but their visual racial presentation has received limited attention. A diverse group of U.S. children watched a 15-min physical activity-promoting animated Sci-Fi narrative. They were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, which varied the lead characters’ racial presentation: realistic racially unambiguous (Original: White children, Black mother), realistic racially ambiguous (Ambiguous: All with brown skin without specified race/ethnicity), and fantastical racially ambiguous (Fantastical: All with brown skin with fantastical hair-and-eye color schemes). We assessed narrative engagement, wishful identification, and physical activity intention. Controlling for social desirability and multigroup ethnic identity, children who watched Fantastical characters showed significantly higher narrative engagement than those who watched Original characters, but they did not statistically differ from those who watched Ambiguous characters. Structural equation modeling indicated that narrative engagement and wishful identification fully mediated the racial representation effect (Fantastical vs. Original) on physical activity intention.
... Story immersion refers to the experience of being absorbed and engaged by it. The players may experience psychological immersion while being fully engaged in the game story, thereby paying close attention to embedded messages, and taking on a leading role in the learning process Thompson et al. 2012;Wang et al. 2015;Wang et al. 2017). The development of mHealth interventions must be based on evidence, behavior change theories, and taxonomies. ...
The replacement of unprocessed and minimally processed foods with processed and ultra-processed ones can be a contributor to the increased prevalence of obesity amongst adults and adolescents. Mobile health (mHealth) innovations, such as mobile applications (apps), especially games, can be used to improve health behaviors and increase adolescent knowledge. The aim of this qualitative research was to describe the development, assessment, and story immersion of a mHealth nutrition education app developed to improve the food knowledge of adolescents. This study employed the stepwise approach model to the mHealth app development, according to the person-based approach and evidence-based behavior change techniques. The mHealth app was based on the concepts of the NOVA system food classification, present in the Brazilian dietary guidelines. The developed app, Nutrigame – your food guide, is a story-based serious game set in the food routine of an adolescent who needs to choose what to eat, when, where, and with whom the meals are taken. The first version of the app was tested by a group of adolescents (convenience sample, n=6, mean age: 15.8 ± 0.9 years) for 30 days. To assess usability, feasibility, engagement (user testing), and formative evaluation from the user's perspective, five individual interviews. After the last interview, the participants were required to complete a 13-item immersion scale, adapted from the narrative transportation scale to assess story immersion game. The final version of the game was adapted to meet the suggestions presented by the adolescents. All steps used for the app development are described. The gamification elements chosen led to the comprehension of the main learning contents. The mean story immersion score (30.3 ± 1.9) demonstrates the participant's involvement with the game's narrative. This study can provide useful insights to public health researchers and nutrition educators who are planning to develop a mHealth nutrition education app from a practical perspective.
... Narrative features are used to provide a story to a game, helping users to imagine the virtual world and become immersed in gameplay (Lu, 2015;Lu, Thompson, Baranowski, Buday, & Baranowski, 2012;Schneider, Lang, Shin, & Bradley, 2004). Such immersion can positively impact users' exercise experience. ...
... According to Amy Shirong Lu et al. [84], enriching exergames with stories could facilitate players' compliance to play them, keeping involvement in the game high. Indeed, these are supposed to facilitate players' immersion process, as demonstrated in the study that evaluated the game Escape from Diab [85]. Notably, the latter study also documented improved immersion effects and several health outcomes in the case of ethnic similarity between video game characters and players [23]. ...
Exergames are defined as digital games that require bodily movements to play, stimulating an active gaming experience to function as a form of physical activity (PA). The players interact with the game through whole-body movements improving energy expenditure. Exergames may be effective in improving physical and psychological aspects of children and adolescents with obesity. In this narrative review, we synthesized the current evidence regarding the role of exergames in modifying body composition and weight and in promoting changes in sedentary behavior to define the benefits of active video games as useful tools for fighting sedentarism and to outline the future directions of exergaming as a supplementation exercise rather than a replacement in educational programs for pediatric obesity. Data from the literature indicate that exergames may offer an interesting impact on childhood obesity and may be considered a potential strategy for controlling weight gain and body composition, promote PA, and decrease time spent on sedentary behavior in children and adolescents with obesity. However, exergame use also has some limits, such as children’s poor self-regulation and poor structuring of exergame use. Therefore, a prudent approach should be maintained, and additional high-quality research is needed to determine if exergames can be effectively used in the treatment of childhood obesity and if new digital media, as a supplementation of exercise rather than a replacement, could be considered to combat sedentary behavior in educational programs for pediatric obesity prevention.
... After watching the daily animation episodes, children answered questionnaires that included demographics, narrative immersion (Lu et al., 2012), PA motivation (Kendzierski & DeCarlo, 1991), and social desirability (Reynolds & Paget, 1983). ...
... As a result, the narrative immersion (NI) scale (Lu et al., 2012) was adapted for children's understanding by revising the original 11-item narrative transportation scale (Green & Brock, 2000). Because the original scale focused on transportation via textual media, one of the original items ("I had a vivid image of [character name]") was removed. ...
... Because the original scale focused on transportation via textual media, one of the original items ("I had a vivid image of [character name]") was removed. Consequently, the narrative immersion scale captures all of the original's essential aspects for assessing children's reactions to visual narrative media (Lu et al., 2012). The remaining ten items have previously been tested multiple times among children of the same age group Sousa et al., 2020). ...
Research has supported the effectiveness of narratives for promoting health behavior, but different narrative presentation formats (serial vs. episodic) have seldom been compared. Suspense theories suggest that serial narratives, which do not provide a full resolution at the end of an episode, may create higher motivation for continued engagement with a story. Forty-four 8 to 12-year-old children were randomly assigned to watch an animation series designed for an existing active video game in which the plot was delivered either continuously across multiple episodes (serial) or in multiple yet relatively independent self-contained episodes (episodic). Controlling for social desirability, children who watched the serial narrative had significantly more moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and step counts while the episodic group’s gameplay duration decreased, especially during later visits. There was no difference in self-reported narrative immersion or physical activity intention. Serial narratives can result in more time spent in MVPA behaviors than episodic narratives.
... Também em jogos sérios, com participação ativa dos estudantes enquanto exercem a sua agência interagindo com a narrativa do jogo (Ravyse et al., 2017). Em videogames, a narrativa envolve o público-alvo com a trama e o drama dos personagens (Lu et al., 2012). ...
... Ainda não sabemos muito bem, pois muitas revisões da literatura têm se debruçado sobre a criação de narrativas com foco no contexto (e.g., jornalismo, saúde), e não em métodos específicos para a imersão. Um método de criação de narrativas imersivas atende a aspectos básicos: o público-alvo, o objetivo e o tipo de imersão narrativa (i.e., reconte a história, altere seu comportamento a partir da identificação com eventos ou personagens) (Lu et al., 2012). ...
O conceito de narrativa imersiva enfoca narrativas enquanto forma de promover o estado psicológico de imersão do público-alvo. Este artigo apresenta o resultado de uma revisão de revisões de literatura que objetivou identificar os principais métodos para concepção e criação de narrativas imersivas, considerando aspectos estruturais e elementos específicos, como personagens e cenários. Os resultados revelaram cinco clusters com características diferenciadas, considerando as dimensões da imersão narrativa temporal, espacial e emocional.
... Feeling part of or inside the story, leads us to the concept of "(...) narrative immersion and its subcategories (temporal, spatial and emotional) are characterized by a degree of mental absorption or intense preoccupation with the story, the diegetic space and the characters inhabiting this space" [3]. To increase narrative immersion, characters with characteristics of the target audience were created in a Health Video Game to prevent childhood obesity [6]. Textual narratives were developed with the OC2RD2 technique [7] to generate narrative immersion [2]. ...
... The character's speech is in text within the balloon; the shape and connection of the balloon to the character defines whether the character is speaking or thinking (e.g., "Right now the crowds are with us!...") and can reflect the nature and emotion of the narrative [8], translating into images the character's voice and thoughts as the scene is read. Although comics are presented in a structure of their own, we adopted the concept of their application to communicate the narrative with plot and characters to increase immersion narrative [3], [6], [9], [10]. ...
... shows a map of the implementable features on the platforms used. Although the Pixton and Powtoom platforms provide free accounts, characters cannot be characterized in a detailed and faithful way to the archetypes, which can impact the narrative immersion by the characters [3], [6]. The Sims 4 platform, although not a free version, made it possible to implement all the features in Table II. ...
A critical factor in immersive educational narratives is identification by students with the characters. In this work-in-progress analyzes the process of rendering characters from textual narratives into visual form by non-artists (i.e., instructors). We tried to match archetypes with their visual representation through the platforms: Pixton, Powtoon (both 2D) and The Sims4 (3D). The limitations of characterization can impact students’ narrative immersion. As future work we intend to test with the target group and observe the improvements needed to increase identification and sense of immersion in the narrative.
... For example, players may identify with characters' backstories and actions or take on roles that help facilitate learning during gameplay (Marchiori et al., 2012). When learning opportunities are directly woven into the game narrative, players may experience intrinsic motivation to engage in learning (Baranowski et al., 2008;Lu et al., 2012). In turn, the players may apply these learned skills in real life, increasing the generalizability of in-game learning to real-life settings. ...
A key ingredient in successful psychological therapies is found in patients’ motivation and willingness to engage in and follow through with the therapy program. Engaging children is challenging for various reasons, such as their role in their presentation for treatment and differences in parent and child motivations. This chapter explores the utility of serious games as a potential option that offers an engaging and effective approach to psychiatric treatment for children and adolescents with mental health difficulties. The authors review research projects utilizing the serious games methodology at the Child Guidance Clinic, an outpatient psychiatric clinic for children and adolescents in Singapore, in the management of various mental health concerns. The utility and feasibility of gamified interventions for autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorders, and anger management issues are discussed, along with practical implications for the application of serious games in mental healthcare.
... The purpose of these characters is to highlight the thread of communication throughout the workshops and website, as this is the key skill that underpins all the aims, activities, and discussions in this intervention. It is also hoped that these scenarios would increase parental motivation and skills, creating a social norm around parenting CYP with T1D and encouraging resilience building and action planning (42). ...
Children and young people (CYP) with type 1 diabetes (T1D) are twice as likely to develop disordered eating (T1DE) and clinical eating disorders than those without. This has significant implications for physical and mental health, with some eating disorders associated with repeated diabetic ketoacidosis and higher HbA1c levels, both of which are life threatening. There is currently limited psychological support for CYP and families with T1D but increasingly, policy and practice are suggesting disordered eating in T1D may be effectively prevented through psychological intervention. We describe the development and theoretical underpinnings of a preventative psychological intervention for parents of CYP aged 11-14, with T1D. The intervention was informed by psychological theory, notably the Information Motivation Behaviour Skills model and Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy. The intervention was co-developed with an expert advisory group of clinicians, and families with T1D. The manualised intervention includes two online group workshops, and supplementary online materials. The intervention continues to evolve, and feasibility findings will inform how best to align the intervention with routine care in NHS diabetes teams. Early detection and intervention are crucial in preventing T1DE, and it is hoped that the current intervention can contribute to improving the psychological and physical wellbeing of young people and families managing T1D.
... Immersion refers to the degree to which a person is engrossed in an experience (Harvey, Loomis, Bell, & Marino, 1998;Lu, Thompson, Baranowski, Buday, & Baranowski, 2012). Thus, spatial immersion describes the extent to which a person is engrossed in the environment or space where the experience is taking place. ...
Paper for 50 days here..............................................................................
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026840122100075X?dgcid=author
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The use of immersive technologies has changed the consumption environment in which retailers provide services. We present findings from a study designed to investigate consumer responses toward a $17 million AI (artificial intelligence)-embedded mixed reality (MR) exhibit in a retail/entertainment complex which combines advanced technology entertainment with retail shopping. Findings from our study demonstrate that the quality of AI (i.e., speech recognition and synthesis via machine learning) associated with an augmented object increases MR immersion associated with spatial immersion, MR enjoyment, and consumers’ perceptions of novel experiences. Collectively, these increase consumer engagement, and positively influence behavioral responses—specifically, purchase intentions and intentions to share experiences with social groups. Overall, findings from this study show that interactive AI and MR technology open new avenues to promote consumer engagement.
