Presence and User Experience in a Virtual Environment under the Influence of Ethanol: An Explorative Study

Bridging the Gap between Basic Research and Clinical Practice: The Growing Role of Translational Neurorehabilitation

Translational neuroscience is intended as a holistic approach in the field of brain disorders, starting from the basic research of cerebral morphology and with the function of implementing it into clinical practice. This concept can be applied to the rehabilitation field to promote promising results that positively influence the patient's quality of life. The last decades have seen great scientific and technological improvements in the field of neurorehabilitation. In this paper, we discuss the main issues related to translational neurorehabilitation, from basic research to current clinical practice, and we also suggest possible future scenarios.

Age and gender effects on presence, user experience and usability in virtual environments-first insights

Virtual Reality (VR) is applied in various areas were a high User Experience is essential. The sense of Presence while being in VR and its relation to User Experience therefore form crucial aspects, which are yet to be understood. This study aims at quantifying age and gender effects on this connection, involving 57 participants in VR, and performing a geocaching game using a mobile phone as experimental task to answer questionnaires measuring Presence (ITC-SOPI), User Experience (UEQ) and Usability (SUS). A higher Presence was found for the older participants, but there was no gender difference nor any interaction effects of age and gender. These findings are contractionary to preexisting limited work which has shown higher Presence for males and decreases of Presence with age. Four aspects discriminating this study from literature are discussed as explanations and as a starting point for future investigations into the topic. The results further showed higher ratings in favor of User Experience and lower ratings towards Usability for the older participants.

Using 360° immersive videos to assess paranoia in a non-clinical population

Introduction: For the past two decades, virtual reality (VR) has proven to be an innovative approach for the assessment of state paranoia. However, the use of VR remains costly, and avatars are still far from realistic in terms of facial and bodily expressions. The present study aimed to test the validity of three 360° immersive videos (360IVs) as an accessible and realistic alternative for the assessment of non-clinical state paranoia.Method: Three 360IVs were created (a Lift, a Library and a Bar) and included actors behaving naturally. One hundred and fifty healthy students were assessed in terms of their proneness towards trait paranoia, were then exposed to one of the three 360IVs, and finally completed measures of state paranoia, sense of presence and cybersickness.Results: Results revealed the presence of various interpretations about the actor's attitudes in the three 360IVs. Also, paranoid thoughts were predicted by proneness towards trait paranoia in two out of the three 360IVs. Furthermore, moderate levels of sense of presence and low levels of cybersickness were observed for each 360IV.Conclusion: The present study provides evidence in favour of the use of 360IVs as a new accessible, realistic, and standardised tool to assess state paranoia in non-clinical samples.

Synthesizing Multiple Stakeholder Perspectives on Using Virtual Reality to Improve the Periprocedural Experience in Children and Adolescents: Survey Study

Background

Virtual reality (VR) technology is a powerful tool for augmenting patient experience in pediatric settings. Incorporating the needs and values of stakeholders in the design of VR apps in health care can contribute to better outcomes and meaningful experiences for patients.

Objective

We used a multiperspective approach to investigate how VR apps can be designed to improve the periprocedural experiences of children and adolescents, particularly those with severe anxiety.

Methods

This study included a focus group (n=4) and a survey (n=56) of clinicians. Semistructured interviews were conducted with children and adolescents in an immunization clinic (n=3) and perioperative setting (n=65) and with parents and carers in an immunization clinic (n=3) and perioperative setting (n=35).

Results

Qualitative data were examined to determine the experience and psychological needs and intervention and design strategies that may contribute to better experiences for children in three age groups (4-7, 8-11, and 12-17 years). Quantitative data were used to identify areas of priority for future VR interventions.

Conclusions

We propose a set of ten design considerations for the creation of future VR experiences for pediatric patients. Enhancing patient experience may be achieved by combining multiple VR solutions through a holistic approach considering the roles of clinicians and carers and the temporality of the patient’s experience. These situations require personalized solutions to fulfill the needs of pediatric patients before and during the medical procedure. In particular, communication should be placed at the center of preprocedure solutions, while emotional goals can be embedded into a procedure-focused VR app to help patients shift their focus in a meaningful way to build skills to manage their anxiety.

Multidimensional Evaluation of Virtual Reality Paradigms in Clinical Neuropsychology: Application of the VR-Check Framework

Virtual reality (VR) represents a key technology of the 21st century, attracting substantial interest from a wide range of scientific disciplines. With regard to clinical neuropsychology, a multitude of new VR applications are being developed to overcome the limitations of classical paradigms. Consequently, researchers increasingly face the challenge of systematically evaluating the characteristics and quality of VR applications to design the optimal paradigm for their specific research question and study population. However, the multifaceted character of contemporary VR is not adequately captured by the traditional quality criteria (ie, objectivity, reliability, validity), highlighting the need for an extended paradigm evaluation framework. To address this gap, we propose a multidimensional evaluation framework for VR applications in clinical neuropsychology, summarized as an easy-to-use checklist (VR-Check). This framework rests on 10 main evaluation dimensions encompassing cognitive domain specificity, ecological relevance, technical feasibility, user feasibility, user motivation, task adaptability, performance quantification, immersive capacities, training feasibility, and predictable pitfalls. We show how VR-Check enables systematic and comparative paradigm optimization by illustrating its application in an exemplary research project on the assessment of spatial cognition and executive functions with immersive VR. This application furthermore demonstrates how the framework allows researchers to identify across-domain trade-offs, makes deliberate design decisions explicit, and optimizes the allocation of study resources. Complementing recent approaches to standardize clinical VR studies, the VR-Check framework enables systematic and project-specific paradigm optimization for behavioral and cognitive research in neuropsychology.