Virtual Reality in Higher Education

Virtual reality (VR) is an interactive experience which immerses the user in a digital environment through a sense of presence. In the context of providing an active learning experience, virtual reality has the potential to improve learning outcomes for biomedical science students as it allows the visualisation of and interaction with digital representations of dynamic objects and complex concepts. Studies in bioscience and medical education have shown mixed results pertaining to the benefits of VR as a learning tool. This review aims to consolidate how VR succeeded or failed in improving learning outcomes, and assesses the issue of VR scalability for the ever-growing cohorts in tertiary bioscience courses

Efeito da realidade virtual em crianças com paralisia cerebral: revisão bibliográfica

Projeto de Graduação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Licenciada em FisioterapiaIntrodução: a realidade virtual (RV) tem sido utlizada como forma de melhorar os diferentes padrões de movimento em crianças com Paralisia Cerebral (PC). Objetivo: verificar os efeitos da utilização da RV nos défices motores em crianças com PC. Metodologia: pesquisa com palavras-chave na B-on e na base de dados Pubmed para identificar estudos publicados nos últimos 10 anos, randomizados controlados, randomizados não controlados, estudos de casos, publicados em inglês e em que se tratam os défices motores nas crianças com PC com uma idade máxima de 18 anos. Foram excluídos estudos sem texto integral disponível e nos quais foi realizado em simultâneo um outro tipo de tratamento além da RV. Resultados: foram identificados 12 artigos. Conclusão: a maioria dos estudos encontrados foram séries de estudos de caso, o que não permite a extrapolação dos resultados. E necessário efetuar mais estudos para avaliar a evidência da RV como ferramenta coadjuvante ao tratamento de fisioterapia em crianças com PC.Introduction: Virtual Reality (VR) have been used as a way to improve the different movements patterns of patients with Cerebral palsy (CP). Objective: investigate the effects of the use of VR in motor deficits on patients with CP. Methodology: search by keywords on Bon e Pubmed database to identify randomized controlled studies, randomized uncontrolled studies , cases studies, carried on humans during the last 10 years, in English and that deal with the motor deficits in children with CP and whose age is maximum 18. Results: 12 studies were identified. Conclusion: The majority of the studies that we found were series of case studies; which doesn’t permit the extrapolation of the results. It’s necessary to realize more studies in order to evaluate the evidence of the VR as a supporting instrument to physiotherapy in children with CP.N/

Deficit of Executive Control of Positive Emotional Information and Its Association with Social Anhedonia in Schizophrenia

Objectives : Schizophrenia has been considered to be characterized by an abnormality in attention, especially in the executive control. Emotion is an important component of the executive control. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of emotion on the executive control in patients with schizophrenia. Methods : Participants were 20 healthy controls and 19 subjects with schizophrenia. They viewed full-color pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System. During each trial, an emotional picture, which was either positive or negative, lit up on either the left or right side. Participants were instructed to respond to the emotional valance of each stimulus by pressing a button with their left or right index finger, while ignoring its presented side. Results : There was a group difference in the response time, and patients with schizophrenia exhibited an impairment in the executive control of emotional information. However, there was no difference in the response time between the emotional conditions. In the patient group, the missing rate in the positive emotional condition was correlated with the severity of social anhedonia, whereas the missing rate in the negative emotional condition was correlated with the severity of positive symptoms. Conclusion : Patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in the executive control of positive emotional information as well as negative emotion, but it may be due to different underlying mechanisms.ope

Characteristics of Telepresence by Multisensory Feedback and Related Neural Mechanism in Patients with Schizophrenia : A Functional MRI Study.

OBJECTIVES: The multimodal telepresence systems have been adopted in a variety of applications, such as telemedicine, space or underwater teleoperation and videoconference. Multimedia, one of the telepresence systems, has been used in various fields including entertainment, education and communication. The degree of subjective telepresence is defined as the probability that a person perceives to be physically in the remote place when he/she experiences a multisensory feedback from the multimedia. The current study aimed to explore the neural mechanism of telepresence related to multisensory feedback in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: Brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging while fifteen healthy controls and fifteen patients with schizophrenia were experiencing filmed referential conversation at various distances (1 m, 5 m and 10 m). Correlations between the image contrast values and the telepresence scores were analyzed. RESULTS: Subjective telepresence was not significantly different between the two groups. Some significant correlations of brain activities with the telepresence scores were found in the left postcentral gyrus, bilateral inferior frontal gyri, right fusiform gyrus, and left superior temporal sulcus. There were no main effects of group and distance. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia experience telepresence as appropriately as healthy people do when exposed to multimedia. Therefore, patients with schizophrenia would have no difficulty in immersing themselves in multimedia which may be used in clinical training therapies.ope

Joint Attention Virtual Classroom: A Preliminary Study

Objective: Previous studies have suggested that a virtual classroom is immersive and ecologically valid neuropsychological assessment, but those studies have limited components for social attentions. Therefore, the objective in the current study is the development of a joint attention virtual reality (JA-VR) classroom to incorporate social attentions between a participant and a virtual avatar teacher. Methods: Fifty-eight participants were recruited for current study (25 for pilot and 33 for main studies; 32.8% female, n=19; age: M=24.5, SD=4.0). We suggested a JA-VR classroom, and compared it with previous methods including a VR classroom without JA components. We conducted attention experiments with AX-version of continuous performance tasks. Results: Our results suggest that the new JA-VR classroom had convergent validity with previous methods, and that the JA-VR classroom promoted attentional processing among participants better than both old VR and non-VR measures. Conclusion: We add an important social attention concept to the virtual classroom, and believe that this work is an methodological foundation for the study of social attention in school life. We hope it ultimately help people with mental handicaps in social attention.ope

Virtual reality as a tool for promoting reading via enhanced narrative absorption and empathy

Reading fiction is beneficial for various social skills, although reading has become less and less popular with younger generations. This study investigated whether reading a chapter of a fictional story in virtual reality (VR) can make the reading experience more appealing and increase intention to read the story further. A between-subject experiment (N = 83) was conducted to compare the effect of a printed book and a VR reading environment on narrative absorption, empathy with fictional characters, and intention to read. The results show that VR enhances intention to read, via a serial mediation of transportation into the story world and affective empathy. These findings indicate that VR can be effectively exploited for promoting reading

Using serious games to prime safety students for occupational noise exposure risk assessment

Ensuring the safety of our workforce requires substantial training and education of workers. This thesis investigates the potential of priming students with gamification and entertainment techniques in a virtual environment to enhance the training for occupational noise risk assessments. A simulator titled AssessVR, a PC-based application was created to enhance the learning experience of students and safety workers in identifying hazards and assessing risks. This simulator enables students to engage in hazard recognition, develop evaluation strategies, and perform risk assessment and analysis by utilizing the data generated within the simulation. Two studies, a pilot and an enhanced study, were conducted to assess priming learners' effectiveness in enhancing occupational noise risk assessment. The results of the pilot study point to the need for enhancing the gamification of the simulator. Consequently, AssessVR was redesigned as a serious game. In the second study, the gamified AssessVR was used to prime students before they engaged in the risk assessment with a non-gamified, AssessVR. An additional group of students was primed with a non-gamified AssessVR as a benchmark or the assessment of the gamification approach. The results demonstrated that the gamified-based priming significantly improved students' exposure assessments, a critical component of risk assessments. In their assessment, students primed with a gamified approach referenced exposure standards more frequently than those in a traditional utilitarian group. However, not all risk assessment dimensions were improved through gamification

La réalité virtuelle : une solution thérapeutique visant à augmenter l'intérêt et la motivation envers le traitement des phobies spécifiques chez l'enfant?

Les troubles anxieux représentent les problèmes mentaux les plus souvent répertoriés chez les enfants et les adolescents, et la phobie spécifique figure au premier rang (Albano, Chorpita, & Barlow, 2003). Afin de rendre l'aspect thérapeutique moins aversif à un enfant, d'augmenter le désir de recevoir un traitement, et ultimement de pouvoir diminuer les abandons causés par le manque de motivation, la réalité virtuelle offre une alternative intéressante à l'exposition in vivo. L'objectif premier de la thèse est de vérifier si le degré de motivation d'enfants souffrant d'arachnophobie est plus élevé selon qu'ils reçoivent un traitement combinant de l'exposition en réalité virtuelle (in virtuo) à de l'exposition in vivo ou un traitement comportant seulement de l'exposition in vivo. De plus, un objectif secondaire consiste à vérifier si la motivation peut s'avérer un prédicteur de l'efficacité thérapeutique. Finalement, un dernier objectif vise à documenter de façon exploratoire l'efficacité de la méthode d'exposition utilisée (in virtuo vs in vivo). Afin de réaliser cette étude, un travail préparatoire s'est avéré nécessaire pour en préparer les assises. Ainsi, la thèse se compose de trois chapitres, dont deux recensions et une étude empirique. Le premier chapitre se veut une mise à jour des traitements d'exposition pour la phobie spécifique chez l'enfant et confirme l'efficacité de cette méthode pour traiter la phobie spécifique chez l'enfant. Il est aussi possible de noter une tendance à diminuer la longueur des thérapies d'exposition ou encore à combiner l'exposition graduée à d'autres techniques thérapeutiques, telles l'apprentissage vicariant ou encore la désensibilisation par mouvements oculaires et traitement de l'information. Une seconde recension, le deuxième chapitre, met en lumière les travaux réalisés au cours des dernières années impliquant la réalité virtuelle au profit des enfants et des adolescents. Les études sélectionnées et qui font usage d'un système de type immersif s'avèrent peu nombreuses. La recension permet de mettre en évidence que cette technologie a surtout été utilisée à des fins thérapeutiques, médicales et éducatives. Au niveau de la psychothérapie, une seule étude permet d'observer un intérêt envers l'usage de cette technologie avec cette population. Finalement, le dernier chapitre permet de tester empiriquement si l'usage de la réalité virtuelle augmente la motivation des enfants face à la thérapie. Ainsi, 31 enfants et adolescents âgés de 8 à 15 ans ont été recrutés et assignés aléatoirement entre deux conditions : exposition in vivo seulement ou exposition in virtuo combinée à une séance d'exposition in vivo. Des mesures concernant la motivation et l'efficacité thérapeutique ont été prises avant, pendant et après la thérapie. Les résultats montrent qu'il n'existe pas de différence significative entre les deux groupes en ce qui a trait au degré de motivation face aux deux modalités de traitement. De plus, l'analyse des résultats indique que la motivation semble être importante pour expliquer le succès thérapeutique. Pour ce qui a trait à l'efficacité des traitements, les résultats indiquent que l'ajout de la séance d'exposition in vivo serait utile pour augmenter les succès thérapeutiques des enfants ayant reçu le traitement via la réalité virtuelle. Les résultats de cette étude ont des retombées cliniques intéressantes concernant la motivation des enfants phobiques envers la thérapie et des pistes de solutions sont suggérées afin d'adapter la thérapie à leurs besoins.\ud ______________________________________________________________________________ \ud MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : motivation, enfants, réalité virtuell