VR Embodiment for Children

@IEEE VR 2026

2pm, 22nd March, Room 323B

VR Embodiment for Children (VEC) Workshop at IEEE VR 2026

This workshop will be part of IEEE VR 2026, March 21st/22nd (TBC) in Daegu, Korea.

VR HMD device ownership at home or in-school is increasingly common. However, the impact of VR on children is not well understood. In particular, recent developments have enabled users to inhabit a variety of realistic human-like avatars as well as varied non-human bodies.

It’s an exciting idea for any child to “become someone else” in VR, which comes with potential for ground-breaking applications in education and health. However, what are the risks, given that children’s brains are specially tailored towards coping with their growing bodies? This workshops brings together researchers in VR, developmental psychology, and communication studies to explore the following topics:

How can we best measure embodiment in children?
How do sensory information and top-down expectations drive successful embodiment experiences in children?
How can we promote physical and psychological safety in children’s VR embodiment experiences?
How do we best design VR embodiment experiences for children?

Our workshop will be particularly relevant to VR researchers and developers interested in understanding the impact of VR on children, as well as developmental psychologists interested in using VR as an experimental method.

We encourage papers reporting novel research studies and methods, as well as work-in-progress papers on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

How can we best measure embodiment in children?
How can we investigate bodily ownership, a sense of agency, or a sense of place within a virtual environment with children?
Use of psychophysiology to measure embodiment in children
Role of multisensory information in children’s VR embodiment
Avatar appearance and expectations in children’s VR embodiment
Integration of sensory cues and/or expectations in children’s embodied VR
How can we promote physical and psychological safety in children VR embodiment experience?
What are examples of positive VR applications for children’s mental health and education?
How to best design VR embodiment experiences for children?

Keynote Speakers

Prof Dorothy Cowie

Prof Cowie is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at Durham University. She investigates how children and adults use sensory information to ground the sense of bodily self, and to guide movement.

Prof Grace Ahn

Prof Ahn is a Professor of Advertising at Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of Georgia. Her research investigates how digital media transform traditional rules of persuasive communication.

Workshop Programme

22nd March, Sunday 323B

2 - 3:30pm Session 1

2 - 2:15pm Welcome and Introduction

2:15 - 3pm Keynote 1: Prof Dorothy Cowie

3 - 3:30pm Short paper presentations

Nina Fern: Feet in the Sand: Unlock the Restorative Power of the Sea through Virtual Activities

Alexandra Kitson, Alissa N. Antle, Sadhbh Kenny: Methods for Safely Co-Designing Embodied Mental Health VR Interventions with Youth

Dongsik Jo: Educational Effects on Virtual Reality Based Exhibitions of Elementary School Students’ Artworks

Taiki Hattori, Kazunori Terada, Dr. Masahiro Hirai: Virtual Prejudice in Childhood: Impulsive Avoidance Toward Racial Out-Group Avatars

3:30 - 4pm Tea Break

4 - 6pm Session 2

4 - 4:45 Keynote 2: Prof Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn

4:45 - 5:30pm Long paper presentations

Yuke Pi, Prof Marco Fyfe Pietro Gillies, Dr. Leif Johannsen, Dorothy Cowie, Prof Xueni Pan: Designing Super-Functional Virtual Arms for Quantitative Embodiment Research with Children in Virtual Reality

Eugene Ohu: VR Builds Lasting Empathy & Compassion: Observation Edges Embodiment in Adolescents

Emerald Grimshaw, Simon Thurlbeck, Anna Matejko, Professor Robert W Kentridge, Dorothy Cowie: Designing a Multisensory Embodied Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) Experience to Explore the Pedagogical Utility of IVR

5:30 - 6pm Discussion and Closing Remarks

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 6th January, 2026 10th January, 2026
Notification deadline: 22nd January, 2026
Camera-ready deadline: 30th January, 2026

Deadlines and format

We will plan a half a day workshop, with two sessions. The workshop will include two longer keynotes, short paper presentations (5-8 minutes), work-in-progress posters, and discussions.

We encourage two types of submission:

Research paper: 4-6 pages + references
Work-in-progress: 2 pages + references

All paper submissions must be formatted using the IEEE Computer Society VGTC conference format. Accepted papers and posters will have to be formatted by the authors according to the relevant camera-ready guidelines. (https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/).

Submission

Submission should be made via PCS (IEEE VR 2026 Workshop: VEC).

Organisers

Prof Sylvia Pan, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Prof Marco Gillies, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Prof Dorothy Cowie, Department of Psychology, Durham University, UK

Oscar Sill, Department of Psychology, Durham University, UK

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