Drawing on social influence and behavioral intention theories, coworkers' risk-taking serves as an "extra motive" -an exogenous factor-for risk-taking behaviors among workers in the workplace. Social influence theories have shown that social factors, such as social pressure and coworker risk-taking, may predict risk-taking behaviors and significantly affect decision-making. While immersive technologies have been widely used to create close-to-real simulations for construction safety-related studies, there is a paucity of research considering the impact of social presence in evaluating workers' risk decision-making within immersive environments. To bridge this gap, this study developed a state-of-the-art Augmented Virtuality (AV) environment to investigate roofers' risk-taking behaviors when exposed to social stressors (working alongside a safe/unsafe peer). In this augmented virtuality environment, a virtual peer with safe and unsafe behaviors was simulated in order to impose peer pressure and increase participants' sense of social presence. Participants were asked to install asphalt shingles on a physical section of a roof (passive haptics) while the rest of the environment was projected virtually. During shingle installation, participants' cognitive and behavioral responses were captured using psychophysiological wearable technologies and self-report measures. The results demonstrated that the developed AV model could successfully enhance participants' sense of presence and social presence while serving as an appropriate platform for assessing individuals' decision-making orientations and behavioral changes in the presence of social stressors. Such information shows the value of immersive technologies to examine the naturalistic responses of individuals without exposing them to actual risks.

Mannequin-based simulations are widely used to train novice nurses. However, current mannequins have no dynamic facial expressions, which decreases the mannequins’ fidelity and impacts students’ learning outcomes and experience. This study proposes a projection-based AR system for overlaying dynamic facial expressions on a mannequin and implements the system in a stroke simulation. Thirty-six undergraduate nursing students participated in the study and were equally divided into the control (without the system) and experimental group (with the system). The participants’ gaze behavior, simulation performance, and subjective evaluation were measured. Results illustrated that the participants focused more on the face-animated mannequin than the traditional mannequin during the simulation. Nursing experts believed that the face-animated mannequin increased the participants’ performance in recognizing deviations but decreased their performance in seeking additional information. Moreover, the participants reported that the face-animated mannequin was more interactive and helpful for performing appropriate assessments than the traditional mannequin.