Thanks to the increasing availability of consumer head-mounted displays, educational applications of immersive VR could now reach to the general public, especially if they include gaming elements (immersive serious games). Safety education of citizens could be a particularly promising domain for immersive serious games, because people tend not to pay attention to and benefit from current safety materials. In this paper, we propose an HMD-based immersive game for educating passengers about aviation safety that allows players to experience a serious aircraft emergency with the goal of surviving it. We compare the proposed approach to a traditional aviation safety education method (the safety card) used by airlines. Unlike most studies of VR for safety knowledge acquisition, we do not focus only on assessing learning immediately after the experience but we extend our attention to knowledge retention over a longer time span. This is a fundamental requirement, because people need to retain safety procedures in order to apply them when faced with danger. A knowledge test administered before, immediately after and one week after the experimental condition showed that the immersive serious game was superior to the safety card. Moreover, subjective as well as physiological measurements employed in the study showed that the immersive serious game was more engaging and fear-arousing than the safety card, a factor that can contribute to explain the obtained superior retention, as we discuss in the paper.

The increasing availability of head-mounted displays (HMDs) for home use motivates the study of the possible effects that adopting this new hardware might have on users. Moreover, while the impact of display type has been studied for different kinds of tasks, it has been scarcely explored in procedural training. Our study considered three different types of displays used by participants for training in aviation safety procedures with a serious game. The three displays were respectively representative of: (i) desktop VR (a standard desktop monitor), (ii) many setups for immersive VR used in the literature (an HMD with narrow field of view and a 3-DOF tracker), and (iii) new setups for immersive home VR (an HMD with wide field of view and 6-DOF tracker). We assessed effects on knowledge gain, and different self-reported measures (self-efficacy, engagement, presence). Unlike previous studies of display type that measured effects only immediately after the VR experience, we considered also a longer time span (2 weeks). Results indicated that the display type played a significant role in engagement and presence. The training benefits (increased knowledge and self-efficacy) were instead obtained, and maintained at two weeks, regardless of the display used. The paper discusses the implications of these results.

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Although research in moral psychology in the last decade has relied heavily on hypothetical moral dilemmas and has been effective in understanding moral judgment, how these judgments translate into behaviors remains a largely unexplored issue due to the harmful nature of the acts involved. To study this link, we follow a new approach based on a desktop virtual reality environment. In our within-subjects experiment, participants exhibited an order-dependent judgment-behavior discrepancy across temporally separated sessions, with many of them behaving in utilitarian manner in virtual reality dilemmas despite their nonutilitarian judgments for the same dilemmas in textual descriptions. This change in decisions reflected in the autonomic arousal of participants, with dilemmas in virtual reality being perceived more emotionally arousing than the ones in text, after controlling for general differences between the two presentation modalities (virtual reality vs. text). This suggests that moral decision-making in hypothetical moral dilemmas is susceptible to contextual saliency of the presentation of these dilemmas.

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This Section of Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences regularly appears in each issue of the Journal to describe relevant studies investigating the relationship between neurobiology and psychosocial psychiatry in major psychoses. The aim of these Editorials is to provide a better understanding of the neural basis of psychopathology and clinical features of these disorders, in order to raise new perspectives in every-day clinical practice. Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by core deficits with regard to three domains, i.e. social interaction, communication and repetitive or stereotypic behaviour. It is crucial to develop intervention strategies helping individuals with autism, their caregivers and educators in daily life. For this purpose, virtual reality (VR), i.e. a simulation of the real world based on computer graphics, can be useful as it allows instructors and therapists to offer a safe, repeatable and diversifiable environment during learning. This mini review examines studies that have investigated the use of VR in autism. Key words: autism spectrum disorders, rehabilitation, virtual environment, virtual reality.Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a group of pervasive developmental disorders characterized by core deficits in three domains, i.e. social interaction, communication and repetitive or stereotypic behaviour (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), occurring more often in boys than girls (4:1). There has been a significant increase of ASDs over the past few decades, with an incidence of approximately 4 per 10 000 to 6 per 1000 children (Lasalvia & Tansella 2009;Pejovic Milovancevic et al. 2009;Faras et al. 2010). The causes of autism remain largely unknown, but there is evidence that genetic, neurodevelopmental and environmental factors are involved, alone or in combination, as possible causal or predisposing effects of developing autism (Pensiero et al. 2009). Although the degree of impairment among individuals suffering from autism may vary, the impact on affected individuals and their families is generally life-changing. Most studies of ASDs are focused on epidemiology, genetics and neurobiology, but more intervention research is needed to help individuals with autism, their caregivers and educators. In this context, it is crucial to develop tools for neurocognitive habilitation enabling children with ASDs to increase their ability to perform daily-life activities. A rather promising tool has recently emerged in many domains of rehabilitation, namely virtual reality (VR) (Parsons et al. 2009). VR is a simulation of the real world based on computer graphics and can be used as an educational and therapeutic tool by instructors and therapists to offer children a safe environment for learning. Virtual environments (VEs) simulate the real world as it is or create completely new worlds, and provide experiences that can help patients understand concepts as (Email: marcella.bellani@univr.it or paolo.brambilla@uniud.it)Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences (2011), 20, 235-238.