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 - Embodied VR for children: sensory and cognitive factors in embodiment and usability

Bio: 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.

Abstract: While children form a considerable part of the VR user base, little is known about how they adapt to virtual bodies or what factors might affect this. I review of studies, from our lab and others, which map out the factors that constrain and allow children’s virtual embodiment. These factors include multisensory correlations between body-relevant sources such as touch and proprioception, as well as cognitive expectations about the virtual body. We find that multisensory information is key at all ages, while expectations change, with children able to subjectively embody larger bodies more readily than adults, as well as those with altered function. Further, we present new data suggesting that these different information sources may be less integrated in children than in adults. We set out future challenges, including the proper measurement of VR safety in children, and the potential applications of longer-term training paradigms.

Prof Grace Ahn - Scaling XR Systems for Larage Community-Facing Projects with Youth - the Good, Bad, and the Ugly

Bio: 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.

Abstract: XR systems might work beautifully in controlled laboratory settings but when you have to scale them up to involve tens of sites, hundreds of users, and when these users are children... what were once small problems become monstrous headaches. This talk covers the 10 year saga of our research team at the Center for Advanced Computer-Human Ecosystems (CACHE) at the University of Georgia, from building a highly interdisciplinary team, applying a community-based participatory research approach, collecting data from over 1000 children and parents across K-12 schools, YMCA branches, Boys and Girls Clubs, and summer camps, the lessons we learned along the way, and the reasons why we continue to study XR in children, despite all the challenges. We also discuss critical design differences for XR systems, measurement, and study design when children are involved, interacting with XR systems embedded into their everyday settings.

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: Embodied VR for children: sensory and cognitive factors in embodiment and usability

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: Scaling XR Systems for Larage Community-Facing Projects with Youth - the Good, Bad, and the Ugly

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

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

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse