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This is a validation study, aiming to explore the effectiveness of a set of virtual environments for producing emotionally significant responses in students with high levels of test anxiety in order to be able to implement them later in treatment. Twenty-one students agreed to take part, 11 with high test anxiety and 10 with low test anxiety. The virtual environments were prepared in chronological order: the student's home, then the metro, and finally the corridor and lecture hall where the examination takes place. The results showed that the high-testanxiety group presented higher levels of anxiety and depression than the low-test-anxiety group during exposure to the virtual environments. This study shows that virtual reality is able to provoke emotional responses in students with high test anxiety. This validation study should be followed up with treatment studies to evaluate the efficacy of virtual reality therapy for treating test anxiety.

There are few studies of the human factors involved in the engagement of presence. The present study aims to investigate the influence of five user characteristics -test anxiety, spatial intelligence, verbal intelligence, personality and computer experience -on the sense of presence in university students when exposed to virtual environments designed to assess their levels of test anxiety. This is the first study to investigate the influence of spatial intelligence on the sense of presence, and the first to use an immersive virtual reality system to investigate the relationship between users' personality characteristics and presence. The results show a greater sense of presence in test anxiety environments than in a neutral environment. Moreover, high test anxiety students feel more presence than their non-test anxiety counterparts, especially in test anxiety environments. Spatial intelligence and introversion also influence the sense of presence experienced by high test anxiety students exposed to emotional virtual environments. Interestingly, each of these user characteristics influences different dimensions of the sense of presence. These results may help to identify new groups of patients likely to benefit from virtual reality therapy.