Abstract
Presentation of social situations via immersive virtual reality (VR) has the potential to be an ecologically valid way of assessing psychiatric symptoms. In this study we assess the occurrence of paranoid thinking and of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to a single neutral VR social environment as predictors of later psychiatric symptoms assessed by standard methods. One hundred six people entered an immersive VR social environment (a train ride), presented via a head-mounted display, 4 weeks after having attended hospital because of a physical assault. Paranoid thinking about the neutral computer-generated characters and the occurrence of PTSD symptoms in VR were assessed. Reactions in VR were then used to predict the occurrence 6 months later of symptoms of paranoia and PTSD, as assessed by standard interviewer and self-report methods. Responses to VR predicted the severity of paranoia and PTSD symptoms as assessed by standard measures 6 months later. The VR assessments also added predictive value to the baseline interviewer methods, especially for paranoia. Brief exposure to environments presented via virtual reality provides a symptom assessment with predictive ability over many months. VR assessment may be of particular benefit for difficult to assess problems, such as paranoia, that have no gold standard assessment method. In the future, VR environments may be used in the clinic to complement standard self-report and clinical interview methods.
Highlights
Presentation of social situations via immersive virtual reality (VR) has the potential to be an ecologically valid way of assessing psychiatric symptoms
In this study we assess the occurrence of paranoid thinking and of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to a single neutral VR social environment as predictors of later psychiatric symptoms assessed by standard methods
In this paper we report for the first time on the ability of the responses in VR to predict the occurrence of paranoia as assessed by standard self-report and assessor-rated measures at the 6-month followup
Summary
Over the course of a year, 106 individuals were recruited to the study. The inclusion criteria were as follows: experienced a distressing assault within the previous month; attended the Accident and Emergency Department at King’s College Hospital, London, for related injuries; was age 18 to 65; and could attend a baseline assessment between 4 and 6 weeks after the assault. The first item was the degree to which the people on the train were hostile (from not hostile to extremely hostile); the second item was how paranoid they felt (from not paranoid to strongly paranoia); the third item was the degree to which the environment brought back memories, thoughts, or feelings about the assault (from did not remind to reminded very much); and the final item assessed the degree of presence in the scene (“Which was strongest on the whole, your sense of being in the real world of the laboratory or being on the virtual tube?”; rated from being in the laboratory to being in the virtual tube) Each of these items was used separately, with higher ratings indicating greater endorsement of the characteristic
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