Stronger reactivity to social gaze in virtual reality compared to a classical laboratory environment

Rubo, Marius; Gamer, Matthias

doi:10.1111/bjop.12453

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Taken together, these results show that VR immersion in general does not influence participants inter-temporal preferences in a systematic fashion and might open up a road to more ecologically valid lab experiments, e.g., focusing on behavioral cue-reactivity in addiction. This is in line with other results showing the superiority of VR compared to classical laboratory experiments [6] .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Recent research has exploited the development of high-performance virtual reality (VR) technology to increase the ecological validity of stimuli presented in studies of cue-exposure [1–3] , counterconditioning [4] , equilibrium training [5] , social gazing [6] and gambling behavior in healthy control participants [7] . Furthermore, it has been shown to increase immersion and arousal during gambling games [8] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reliability assessment of temporal discounting measures in virtual reality environments

Bruder

Scharer

Peters

2020

Preprint

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Increased reactivity to addiction related cues (cue-reactivity) plays a critical role in the maintenance of addiction. Studies assessing cue-reactivity in gambling disorder often suffer from low ecological validity due to the usage of picture stimuli in a neutral lab environment. Here we describe a novel virtual reality (VR) set-up for the concurrent assessment of behavioral and psychophysiological cue-reactivity in gambling disorder. On two days, thirty-four healthy non-gambling participants explored two rich and navigable VR-environments (neutral: cafe vs. gambling-related: casino and sports-betting facility), while their electrodermal activity was measured using remote sensors. In addition, participants completed a temporal discounting task implemented in each VR environment. On a third day, participants performed the task in a standard lab testing context. We then used comprehensive computational modeling using both standard softmax and drift diffusion model (DDM) choice rules to assess the reliability of discounting model parameters assessed in VR. Test-retest reliability estimates were good to excellent for the discount rate log(k), whereas they were poor to moderate for additional DDM parameters. Differences in model parameters between standard lab testing and VR, reflecting reactivity to the different environments, were mostly numerically small and of inconclusive directionality. Finally, while exposure to VR generally increased tonic skin conductance, this effect was not modulated by the neutral vs. gambling-related VR-environment. Taken together this proof-of-concept study in non-gambling participants demonstrates the feasibility assessing both physiological and behavioral cue-reactivity in VR. We show that temporal discounting measures obtained in VR are reliable, suggesting that VR is a promising tool for an ecologically valid assessment of cue-reactivity in gambling disorder.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reliability assessment of temporal discounting measures in virtual reality environments

Bruder

Scharer

Peters

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…For instance, treatments of specific phobias using exposure therapy carried out in VR were found to generalize well to real-world situations (Morina et al 2015;Freeman et al 2017), suggesting that fear responses may not differentiate whether habituation was learned in the real world or in VR. When directly comparing attention towards a virtual world seen in VR or on a computer monitor, Rubo and Gamer (2020) found a more pronounced gaze reactivity towards a virtual agent's social behavior when viewed in VR. Recall for the position of objects in 3-dimensional arrangements were improved when the scene was viewed using a head-mounted display compared to when it was viewed on a computer monitor (Krokos, Plaisant, and Varshney 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Human Source Memory System struggles to distinguish Virtual Reality and Reality

Rubo¹,

Munsch²,

Messerli³

2020

Preprint

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Virtual Reality (VR) is used in a variety of ﬁelds with the goal to increase ecological validity compared to traditional monitor-based setups. Here we report additional evidence for the adequacy of this research strategy. In a memory confusion paradigm spanning over stimuli presentation in reality, VR and on a computer monitor, participants were more prone to confusing reality with VR than with a traditional monitor-based setup, indicating a relative proximity of experiences in VR and reality. We speculate that the human source memory’s diﬃculty in distinguishing VR from reality may provide a basis for the good generalizability of treatment eﬀects in VR to daily life. At the same time, the eﬀect may demonstrate a potential danger of a mindless use of VR technology.

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“…Social cognition research places great hope in virtual reality (VR) to overcome limitations of laboratory studies and resolve discrepancies between findings obtained within restricted laboratory contexts and naturalistic situations (Parsons, Gaggioli, & Riva, 2017;Risko, Laidlaw, Freeth, Foulsham, & Kingstone, 2012;Rubo & Gamer, 2020;Zaki & Ochsner, 2009). These discussions are based on the critique that social cognition research frequently involves simplified stimuli that do not represent reality, which is multimodal, dynamic, and contextually embedded (Zaki & Ochsner, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The use of VR for examining social attention is a rather recent development. It has not yet been extensively used to assess attentional prioritization of human beings (for an exception, see Rubo & Gamer, 2020). An experimental design that has been more frequently applied in this domain concerns the examination of social attention in the real world using mobile eye tracking glasses and comparing these findings to a presentation of video recordings on a computer screen to either the same (Foulsham, Walker, & Kingstone, 2011) or another participant (Rubo, Huestegge, & Gamer, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reality in a sphere: A direct comparison of social attention in the laboratory and the real world

Großekathöfer¹,

C²,

Gamer³

2021

Preprint

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Humans often show reduced social attention in real situations, a finding rarely replicated in controlled laboratory studies. Virtual reality is supposed to allow for ecologically valid and at the same time highly controlled experiments. This study aimed to provide initial insights into the reliability and validity of using spherical videos viewed via a head-mounted display (HMD) to assess social attention. We chose five public places in the city of Würzburg and measured eye movements of 44 participants for 30 seconds at each location twice: Once in a real environment with mobile eye tracking glasses and once in a virtual environment playing a spherical video of the location in an HMD with an integrated eye tracker. As hypothesized,participants demonstrated reduced social attention with less fixations on passengers in the real environment as compared to the virtual one. This is in line with earlier studies showing social avoidance in interactive situations. Furthermore, we observed more consistent fixation patterns in virtual environments. These findings highlight that the potential for social interactions and an adherence to social norms are essential modulators of viewing behavior in social situations and cannot be easily simulated in laboratory contexts. However, spherical videos might be helpful for supplementing the range of methods in social cognition research and other fields. Data and analysis scripts are available at https://osf.io/hktdu/.

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Stronger reactivity to social gaze in virtual reality compared to a classical laboratory environment

Cited by 17 publications

References 27 publications

Reliability assessment of temporal discounting measures in virtual reality environments

Reliability assessment of temporal discounting measures in virtual reality environments

The Human Source Memory System struggles to distinguish Virtual Reality and Reality

Reality in a sphere: A direct comparison of social attention in the laboratory and the real world

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