Empirical evaluation of virtual environment technology as an experimental tool in developmental spatial cognition research

The study compared developmental aspects of spatial knowledge acquisition in a real and a virtual large-scale environment according to the classical study of Cohen and Schuepfer (1980 Cohen, R. and Schuepfer, T. 1980. The representation of landmarks and routes. Child Development, 51: 1065–1071. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) with 40 younger children (7–8 years old), 40 older children (11–12 years old), and 40 adults. All participants learned the correct route through a maze, recalled the inherent landmarks, and drew a map of the maze. The results revealed equivalent age effects for these tasks in the real and the virtual world. In both conditions younger children needed more trials to learn the route and showed less configurational knowledge than older children and adults. Age group performance on landmark recollection did not differ in either the virtual or the real world maze. Except for the map drawing task performance was always worse in the virtual world condition. Because the developmental process was comparable in real and virtual environments, the results support the use of virtual environments for the research on developmental aspects of spatial knowledge.     

Dreaming and consciousness

Abstract

Research in the second half of the twentieth century may finally have succeeded in constraining the boundaries of reasonable discussion about dreams and dreaming. Largely owing to physiological discoveries and psychophysiological methods for the representative sampling of human dreamlife, we now have a body of observations that delimits plausible explanations and theories.

For example, we now know that neither REM sleep nor its dreaming is a sporadic, fleeting response to intense psychic needs or peripheral organ states, but rather is an autonomous, cyclically recurring process which consumes relatively much of our sleep, indeed of our lives. We also know that the content of representatively sampled dreams of both adults (Snyder, 1970) and children (Foulkes, 1982) is generally realistic and mundane, rather than fantastic and bizarre. From this finding, and from direct com parisons of representatively sampled laboratory-collected dreams with spon taneously remembered home dreams (e.g. Foulkes. 1979). it has become apparent that the idea of dreaming as being full of strange and discontinuous imagery is a stereotype based on limited acquaintance with our own dreamlife. Specifically, our most ordinarily memorable dreams seem to be those relatively few that are particularly emotionally engaging, particularly unrealistic, or particularly odd in their imagery or thematic sequence. This leads us to underestimate the orderliness of a process that typically functions plausibly and coherently, in a similar if not identical manner to that which we believe (perhaps also stereotypically) characterises our non-dreaming experience.

Thus, studies of representatively sampled dreaming have shown that dream imagery itself typically is realistic or plausible (Dorus, Dorus, & Rechtschaffen, 1971). that dream speech typically is both grammatically correct and appropriate to the imagined situation in which it is embedded (Heynick, 1983). that the feelings accompanying dream imagery typically are appropriate to the imagined situations which they accompany (Foulkes, Sullivan, Kerr, & Brown, 1988), and that, overwhelmingly often, dreams progress over time in a continuous rather than a discontinuous way (Foulkes & Schmidt, 1983).

Such data indicate the need to radically revise or replace most older dream theories from the clinical tradition. Given the role that physiologists and physiological methods played in the development of these data, it was perhaps inevitable that dream theories would begin to be framed in reductionist terms. And, since the 19505, there have been many attempts to “explain” dream phenomena through their reduction to neurophysiological processes (e.g. Crick & Mitchison, 1983; Hobson & McCarley, 1977)     

Effectiveness of virtual reality distraction during a painful medical procedure in pediatric oncology patients

The effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) as a behavioral intervention designed to decrease distress during port access procedure was examined in 20 7- to 14-year-old pediatric oncology patients. Children were randomized to either engage in an immersive VR environment during the procedure or to a no VR control condition. Children's distress was assessed through subjective self-ratings and objective physiological and behavioral ratings. Narrative accounts of the experience were used as a measure of how well the child coped with the procedure. VR was effective in reducing children's distress on all measures. Implications of these findings for intervention are discussed.     

Influence of body-centered information on the transfer of spatial learning from a virtual to a real environment

This study investigated the effects of body-centred information on the transfer of spatial learning using a wayfinding task and tasks that specifically probe the route and survey strategies of navigation. The subject learned a route in either a real or a virtual environment (VE; 3D scale model of a Bordeaux neighbourhood) and then reproduced it in the real environment. The involvement of body-based information was manipulated across the spatial learning conditions in the VE: participants learned with full body-based information (treadmill with rotation), with the translational component only (treadmill without rotation) or without body-based information (joystick). In the wayfinding task, the results showed a significant effect of the learning environment with the best scores obtained in the real and treadmill with rotation conditions. There was no significant difference between these two conditions, but the real condition was significantly different from the treadmill without rotation and joystick conditions. Also, the visual flow was sufficient to successfully perform the two egocentric tasks used as well as a direction estimation task (a survey task), in so far as there is no significant difference between the joystick and the treadmill conditions. By contrast, the distance estimates were improved by the treadmill condition including the translational component (but not the rotational component). Finally, our results show that treadmill with rotation promotes the transfer of spatial learning from a virtual to a real environment (compared to joystick and treadmill without rotation). Moreover, body-centred informations are more involved in allocentric (distance estimates) than egocentric navigational strategies.     

Réalité virtuelle et santé des personnes âgées institutionnalisées. Vers un EHPAD 2.0 ?

Virtual reality (VR) is used in general health care: prevention, physical medicine, chronic and acute pain, quality of life in palliative care, and in psychiatry: anxiety, depression, addiction, psychosis. Our objective is showing VR using among elderly people in French retirement home. Virtual reality is showing efficacy as distraction, anti-pain, tranquillising, antidepressant methods. It should be an answer to many elderly health problems. VR is easy to use, with low side effects. Non-drug treatments among elderly people are recommended. Used as complementary or alternative medicine, VR must be shaped for using with old and fragile people in retirement home.     

Physical effort biases the perceived pleasantness of neutral faces: A virtual reality study

The role of affective responses to effort in the regulation of physical activity behavior is widely accepted. Yet, to investigate these affective responses during physical activity, most studies used direct self-reported measures that are prone to biases (e.g., social desirability, ability to introspect). To reduce these biases, we used an indirect measure (i.e., an affect misattribution procedure) that assessed the implicit affective valence elicited by physical effort in 42 healthy young adults. Specifically, participants rated the pleasantness of neutral human faces presented in a virtual environment while cycling at different intensities. We used this rating as an indicator of implicit affective valence. Results showed that higher perceived effort was associated with lower pleasantness ratings of neutral faces, with this effect only emerging at moderate-to-high levels of perceived effort. Further analyses showed that higher actual effort was also associated with lower pleasantness ratings of neutral faces. Overall, these findings suggest that higher levels of perceived effort are associated with decreased affective valence during physical activity. Finally, this study presents a new indirect measure of affective valence during physical activity.     

Virtual reality is more efficient in learning human heart anatomy especially for subjects with low baseline knowledge

New technologies make their way into education and one of the most prominent of them is the immersive Virtual Reality (IVR). But the scientific data about its efficiency in the educational process is controversial. In the present study three randomized groups of students, who did not have biological and medical classes amongst their courses, studied human heart anatomy using three different learning methods – a paper (text and images); a 3D interactive human heart model presented on a computer display; an IVR human heart model. Prior and after learning session students performed the test of human heart anatomy with 28 open questions. The IVR group showed the increase of correct answers within the group and compared with other groups. Also, the subjects with lesser baseline knowledge in IVR group showed the greater increase of correct answers following IVR session. The structure and the way how the learning material should be presented in IVR and how it affects the learning outcomes are discussed.     

The impact of state and dispositional mindfulness on prospective memory: A virtual reality study

Prospective memory (PM) consists of remembering to perform an action that was previously planned. The recovery and execution of these actions require attentional resources. Mindfulness, as a state or a dispositional trait, has been associated with better attentional abilities while mind wandering is linked with attentional failures. In this study, we investigated the impact of mindfulness on PM. Eighty participants learned 15 cue-action associations. They were, then, asked to recall the actions at certain moments (time-based items) or places (event-based items) during a walk in a virtual town. Before the PM task, participants were randomly assigned to a mindfulness or mind wandering (control condition) session. Dispositional mindfulness was measured via the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). Although considered as two opposite states, we did not report any difference between the two groups on PM abilities. Nevertheless, the natural tendency to describe one's own sensations (the Describing facet of the FFMQ) predicted time-based performance in both groups. We discuss different hypotheses to explain this finding in light of recent findings on the impact of mind wandering on future oriented cognition. Our main observation is a positive link between the Describing facet and time-based PM performances. We propose that this link could be due to the common association of this mindfulness facets and PM with attentional and interoceptive abilities. Additional studies are needed to explore this hypothesis.     

Audiovisual time-to-collision estimation for accelerating vehicles: The acoustic signature of electric vehicles impairs pedestrians' judgments

To avoid collisions, pedestrians intending to cross a road need to accurately estimate the time-to-collision (TTC) of an approaching vehicle. For TTC estimation, auditory information can be considered particularly relevant when the approaching vehicle accelerates. The sound of vehicles with internal combustion engine (ICEVs) provides characteristic auditory information about the acceleration state (increasing rotational speed and engine load). However, for electric vehicles (EVs), the acoustic signature during acceleration is less salient. Although the auditory detection of EVs has been studied extensively, there is no research on potential effects of the altered acoustic signature of EVs on TTC estimation. To close this gap, we compared TTC estimates for ICEVs and for EVs with and without activated acoustic vehicle alerting system (AVAS). We implemented a novel interactive audiovisual virtual-reality system for studying the human perception of approaching vehicles. Using acoustic recordings of real vehicles as source signals, the dynamic spatial sound field corresponding to a vehicle approaching in an urban setting is generated based on physical modeling of the sound propagation between vehicle and pedestrian (listener) and is presented via sound field synthesis (higher-order Ambisonics). In addition to the auditory simulations, the scene was visually presented on a head-mounted display with head tracking. Participants estimated the TTC of vehicles that either approached at a constant speed or accelerated positively. In conditions with constant speed, TTC estimates for EVs with and without AVAS were similar to those for ICEVs. In contrast, for accelerating vehicles, there was a substantial effect of the vehicle type on the TTC estimates. For the EVs, the mean TTC estimates showed a significant overestimation. Thus, subjects on average perceived the time of arrival of the EV at their position as longer than it actually was. The extent of overestimation increased with acceleration and presented TTC. This pattern is similar to a first-order TTC estimation representing a failure to consider the acceleration, which is consistently reported in the literature for visual-only presentations of accelerating objects. In comparison, the overestimation of TTC was largely reduced for the accelerating ICEVs. The AVAS somewhat improved the TTC estimates for the accelerating EVs, but without reaching the same level of accuracy as for the ICEVs. In real traffic scenarios, overestimations of the TTC of approaching vehicles might lead to risky road-crossing decisions. Therefore, our finding that pedestrians are significantly less able to use the acoustic information emitted by accelerating EVs for their TTC judgments, compared to accelerating ICEVs, has important implications for road safety and for the design of AVAS technologies.     

The virtual body of Christ and embrace of the seriously ill

ABSTRACT

Since the time of the Apostle Paul, the body of Christ has always been a virtual body, made up of members who were not always physically present to one another but were nevertheless part of the same catholic community. Virtual presence in today’s society comes most often via digital technology, a reality that prompts many Christian leaders and theologians to warn of the dangers of disembodied existence. This paper challenges the claim that virtual presence via digital technology is necessarily an inferior form of presence. Using autoethnographic research of living with advanced-stage cancer, the author explores how virtual connection via technology can sometimes be a superior form of presence for those undone by illness and other traumas. The article concludes with a call to churches to draw on biblical, theological, and liturgical resources to help imagine how digital devices can be used to practice healing forms of attentiveness to those who need it most.