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VHIL researchers are experimenting with how to establish a "psychological connection" to real-life events through virtual reality. Professor Jeremy Bailenson is exploring human reaction to the technology, and how making people part of a scene can create empathy to enhance audience's experience.

There is little research on children and immersive virtual reality.  Our research seeks to examine how young children behaviorally and socially respond to immersive virtual reality, and the characters within it. We have conducted an extended review of the literature that currently exists in this realm and are preparing a white paper on the “state of the art” of the overlap between developmental psychology and VR.  Moreover, we have run a series of studies that will contribute to a better understanding of children’s experiences with this new technology.   

In this line of studies, we are examining a concept first developed by Jaron Lanier called "homuncular flexibility" – the ability to learn to control novel avatars in interactive tasks. For example, in order to reach further in virtual space, can users learn to control avatar bodies with extra limbs? This line of research looks at whether the way these avatar bodies look, and the way they are controlled, affects task success, liking and the sense of presence.