The Effects of Virtual Reality Nonphysical Mental Training on Coordination and Skill Transfer in Healthy Adults

Abstract

Context: Mental training is a promising method to improve motor skills. However, transfer of these improvements to different skills or functional activities is still unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of mental balance training programs on motor coordination and skill transfer. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Methods: Fifty-seven healthy adults (28 females and 29 males) aged between 18 and 25 years participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to 3 groups: virtual reality (VR) mental training group, conventional mental training group, and control group. The training program included action observation and motor imagery practice with balance exercise videos. The VR mental training group trained with a VR head-mounted display and the conventional mental training group trained with a nonimmersive computer monitor for 30 minutes, 3 days per week, for 4 weeks. Coordination skills were tested with 2 separate custom-made obstacle course tests (OCT-1 and OCT-2). OCT tests included crouching, turning, leaning, stepping over, changing direction, walking on various surfaces, or using repeated hand and arm movement tasks. OCT-1 was used to investigate the effects of mental exercises on coordination skills, and OCT-2 to investigate transfer effects for novel tasks. Test time (total and corrected) and error types (minor, major, and total) were recorded. Touching an obstacle without changing its position was classified as a minor error, and changing its position was a major error. Results: OCT-1 test time and number of errors significantly decreased in the VR mental training and conventional mental training groups, but not in the control group. The number of minor errors was only decreased in the VR mental training group. For OCT-2, total and corrected time were not significantly different between the groups. However, both training groups were significantly superior to the control group for all types of errors. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that both training interventions can significantly improve coordination and skill transfer test results. In addition, VR mental training may have some advantages over conventional mental training. These findings are promising for the use of mental training for prevention and rehabilitation in special populations.

A Systematic Review of Virtual Reality Features for Skill Training

“…For example, technical features such as immersion, the presence of avatars, and six degrees of freedom correspond to the sense of presence (North, 2014), embodied experience (Ke et al, 2016;Ke & Xu, 2020), and user autonomy respectively; all of which positively influence the overall learning outcome, as reported in the literature (Bulu, 2012;Lindgren & Johnson-Glenberg, 2013;Wu et al, 2021). In addition, the flexibility of VR simulators facilitates repeated exercises, which in turn benefits motor skill training and associated learning activities (Köyağasıoğlu & Özgürbüz, 2022), as well as other NTS, such as teamwork training (Abelson et al, 2015). Presence is considered one of the main experiential features and a prime psychological factor in VR learning environments (Mikropoulos & Strouboulis, 2004;Winn & Windschitl, 2000).…”

Virtual Reality-Based Immersive Rehabilitation for Cognitive- and Behavioral-Impairment-Related Eating Disorders: A VREHAB Framework Scoping Review

“…It enables the simulated practice of functional tasks at a higher dosage than traditional therapies [3][4][5][6]. It has been reported in various training settings, such as physical training [7], mental/cognitive training [8], and vocation or lifeskill training [9,10].…”