A recent study that compared emotional arousal in 2D and 3D VR environments “indicated that emotional stimulation was more intense in the 3D environment due to the improved perception of the environment; greater emotional arousal was generated; and higher beta (21–30 Hz) EEG power was identified in 3D than in 2D.”
Read More about this study here. Other VR research studies can be found here.
VR for training hard skills, particularly those that are dangerous to practice, has obvious benefits and ROI. A program by the California Cybersecurity Institute (CCI) demonstrates the equal importance of VR training to practice the interpersonal skills needed in negotiating dangerous situations involving human trafficking.
Professional coaches are increasingly in demand and the field has been growing significantly over the past decade. Coaches offer personalized support, advice, and guidance, helping clients navigate a variety of life’s challenges from careers to dating to mental health and physical wellness.
A recent article in Behavioral Business News highlighted one example of where professional coaches can step in to supplement an overburdened healthcare system.
“Coaches are helping guide [people] in behavioral skills … to recover [from eating disorders],” Carolyn Costin — a Malibu, California-based psychotherapist and longtime eating disorder expert — told Behavioral Health Business. “Nobody up until now has really been filling that gap. You can have a lot of plans from your therapist and dieticians. But there’s only so much that they can do.”
With access to all types of care, support, and guidance moving from in-person to Zoom, the shortcomings of video sessions are becoming apparent. VR offers several benefits to both clients and coaches over video sessions and headsets are more affordable and powerful than ever.
5 Benefits of VR for Clients and Coaches
VR allows clients to remain anonymous both in appearance and voice (through voice masking) while still interacting with coaches and/or other clients in realistic 3D social environments. This anonymity offers a safe onramp for clients to reveal more about themselves and their struggles without the fear of judgement or recognition. For coaches, anonymity offers an opportunity to expand access to those who may not be comfortable initially identifying themselves for any number of reasons.
2. Avatars Allow For Identity Exploration
Avatars in VR present an opportunity for clients to explore different representations of themselves with a coach and also in diverse social scenarios. Coaches can either participate as avatars themselves or observe and direct from afar as two or more clients take on different identities to practice everything from a first date to a networking event to a public speaking engagement. Guiding clients as they inhabit different identities can change perspectives, build confidence and raise self-awareness.
3. Simulations and Role Play Provide a Safe Space for Real World Scenarios
VR convincingly replicates the experience of sharing a realistic, three-dimensional space with others. This combined with the ability to take on different physical appearances is a powerful tool in changing behavior, growing empathy, and increasing confidence when confronted with the same situations in the real world. Scripted scenarios and other curriculum developed by coaches and translated into VR, offer coaches a powerful tool to provide services to remote clients in a safe, controlled, and shared setting.
4. Remote Sessions Offer A More Engaging and Focused Experience Than Zoom
VR headsets provide a distraction-free remote experience, blocking out external interruptions from other people and competing technologies like smart phones and monitors. For clients, this means being able to work intimately with a professional coach without needing to travel. This opens the door to providing services to new and underserved communities in ways that are more engaging, effective, and focused than Zoom.
5. Analytics and Playback Provide Behavioral Insights That Lead to Outcomes
Analytics like time speaking and directional gaze combined with the ability to record and replay sessions offer coaching tools that can help clients better understand their own behaviors. Repeated practice in a safe environment with feedback prepares clients for facing real challenges in their everyday lives.
Foretell Reality is a social VR platform which features and capabilities that support coaching and training of all kinds. For a demo, click here.
One of the powers of VR is its ability to evoke powerful visceral feelings by transporting people to real or imagined places at any point in time. Unlike a flat screen, the viewer is enveloped in a living 360 scene with sounds and action occurring all around them.
There can be many different uses for leveraging this powerful medium (education, mental health, both hard and soft skill training), but a recent BBC story highlights one that shows the true breadth of how the technology can be leveraged.
The story centers on Project Dastaan, an endeavor co-founded by the grandson of one of the many migrants that was displaced during the violent partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Many families fled for their lives and have never returned to the places they left.
“But now, they can revisit those very places – the houses they left behind, the schools they dropped out of and even the people they thought the would never see again,” according to the projects founders.
Seeing the reaction of the refugees as the take in their VR surroundings shows the true power of the medium. “It was great, it was wonderful. I was feeling as if I had gone back to my childhood,” says one man.
Personalizing the 360 video experience in VR in ways that evoke a sense of presence is a powerful tool that has many use cases. Video of a childhood home, a particular room, a place someone used to visit, a walk someone used to take – these can all be brought back for the purposes of comforting, healing, and remembering.
The Foretell Reality VR platform offers a variety of capabilities and features including 360 video for one or more simultaneous viewers. Click here to schedule a demo.
Thanks to the AR Post for the recent write up about partnership with North-Star Care and for highlighting the fact that the need for remote addiction treatment is not going to end with the pandemic.
Our client, XRHealth, recently highlighted the value of anonymity and the ability to participate from the comfort of one’s own home during emotionally loaded support group therapy. XRHealth therapists not only moderate group conversation but they leverage the 3D avatar bodies and the shared environment to include physical exercise and stretches during sessions.
“Traditionally, groups meet in person, but online and virtual support groups are becoming more popular and accessible due to technology, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Online and virtual meetings are particularly beneficial for those who are homebound, have social anxiety, live in a rural area, have hectic schedules, or prefer anonymity.”
“Foretell Reality has developed an avatar-based, multi-participant virtual reality platform specifically designed for group therapy. At XRHealth, the ability for our patients and moderators to connect with each other through VR is powered by Foretell Reality”
Read more here and be sure to scroll down to watch the video.
Virtual Reality (VR) is often touted as an ‘empathy machine’ for its ability to change pre-conceptions by providing a convincing experience from someone else’s point of view. Whether to combat racism or bullying or increase medical school students empathy toward patients, VR is increasingly being used as a tool to challenge biases and encourage compassion and understanding.
There are various ways to design VR experiences that facilitate this type of introspection including role play with avatars, narrative storytelling, simulations, and 360 video. A recent study focused on the latter approach to determine whether a 360 video in VR taken from the point of view of a woman would increase empathy in men about what it is like to face sexual harassment.
The study, titled ‘The impact of 360 video in VR on How Does It Feel to Be a Woman Victim of Sexual Harassment? The Effect of 360°-Video-Based Virtual Reality on Empathy and Related Variables,’ recruited 44 men in Mexico City and had them experience two different conditions. In one condition, participants watched the 360 video in VR to experience what it is like to be a female victim of sexual harassment (SH) from a first-person perspective. In the other, the same story was presented in text format and the participants had to imagine the content of the story as if it were happening to them.
Among the findings were:
“A tendency (marginally significant) to experience higher empathy after the 360° video than after the narrative. Furthermore, we found a carryover effect of the 360°-video condition. That is, empathy after the narrative was significantly higher when the 360° video was presented before the narrative task rather than after it.”
“Regarding the sense of oneness and perspective taking, [participants] were significantly higher after the 360° video than after the narrative task. A carryover effect on perspective taking was also found because scores in the narrative condition were higher when the 360° video was presented before the narrative task than when it was presented after it.”
In summary, the researchers concluded:
“Despite its limitations, this study raises new possibilities in the prevention and treatment of SH toward women. Empathy, perspective taking, and sense of oneness could be target therapeutic components in interventions designed to decrease SH behaviors through a VR tool that is affordable for clinicians.”
Among other features, the Foretell Reality Virtual Reality (VR) platform provides the ability for one or more people to experience 360 video and then meet together as anonymous avatars to discuss the experience. We welcome partners interested in leveraging this and other tools to overcome biases and increase empathy. Click here for a demo or to contact us.
The term ‘Zoom Fatigue’ was coined over the past year to describe the general malaise associated with constantly being on video calls throughout the day.
Now researchers say that it is a real phenomenon and have identified four main causes including “excessive and intense eye contact, constantly watching video of yourself, the limited mobility of being stuck at your desk, and more energy spent identifying social cues you’d otherwise pick up on intuitively in person.”
Virtual Reality (VR) offers an alternative to video by addressing some of the root causes of Zoom Fatigue.
Excessive and intense eye contact – While eye contact is an important aspect of communication, staring at a panel of faces for prolonged periods of time on a flat screen is simply not natural. VR replaces the flat screen with a shared 3D environment in which participants are spaced naturally apart and conversations mimic those of the real world.
Constantly watching video of yourself – It is natural for humans to fixate on our own appearance and this can distract from natural conversation with others. In VR, everyone is represented as an expressive avatar. This lowers self-judgement and allows for less inhibited conversation.
Limited mobility of being stuck at your desk – Sitting in one place for long periods of time is not healthy mentally or physically. Current VR headsets are not tethered to a computer allowing you to take meetings from anywhere, standing or sitting.
More energy spent identifying social cues – Non-verbal communication can be equally important as speaking and listening. With video calls, those cues typically only happen from the shoulders up and within the confines of a 2D box. In VR, hand gestures, gaze direction, and overall body posture are observable in a 3D environment giving a more complete sense of how someone is reacting to and absorbing information and conversations.
Foretell Reality is a VR platform for remote communication that offers all of the benefits of 3D environments and avatars. We work with our clients to design experiences that fit their use cases in areas like group therapy and support, soft skills training, and business collaboration. Interested in a demo? Click here.
Three-dimensional (3D) video is a powerful feature of Virtual Reality (VR) because it fully envelopes the viewer within a panoramic scene. The effect is similar to sitting in a darkened planetarium, convinced that you have been transported to the center of our universe.
But is 3D video just another way to watch content or could there be deeper implications for learning and psychology? A recent study set out to determine this by comparing the psychological state and learning ability of subjects who were shown the same three videos in 2D conditions and in 3D conditions (VR).
As they viewed the videos, their brain signals (EEG signals) and facial reactions (EMG signals) were recorded using a value called fractal dimension. Researchers then developed a universal formula to compare the fractal dimension between the two types of viewing experiences.
The results revealed that “the EMG signal had a greater value of the fractal dimension in response to 3D videos compared to 2D videos, indicating that the EMG signal is more complex in response to 3D videos compared to 2D videos. In other words, the facial muscles are more engaged with stimuli where they are presented in 3D rather than in 2D.”
With regard to learning ability, “the rate of correct responses to the questions posed after watching the 3D video was 92.60%, which was higher than that obtained after the 2D videos at 80.87%. This difference suggested that the 3D videos resulted in greater attention paid to the details of videos and therefore increased the learning ability of the students.”
It is worth noting that the headset used in this particular study was based on cellular phone technology and not the latest, much more powerful headsets now in the marketplace. Given the level of clarity and freedom of movement now available, another study with updated hardware should be considered.
The Foretell Reality platform includes the ability to view 3D video within an environment alone or with others in real time. Some use cases include social viewing, mindfulness training, pain distraction, and exposure therapy. Request a demo to experience it yourself.
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