EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT VIRTUAL REALITY ENVIRONMENTS ON THERMAL PAIN DISTRACTION
Marcin Czub, Joanna Piskorz · Polish Journal of Applied Psychology · 2012
This study investigated analgesia mechanisms by using virtual reality (VR) technology. We tested how the content of a virtual environment (VE) infl uences the intensity of experienced pain. Two different VE’s were used – relaxation and stimulation, and pain was triggered by heat stimuli. We used repeated experimental designs for the study. Thirty-two undergraduate psychology students participated, with each person being immersed in two VE’s while a heat stimulus was applied to their wrist. Objective and subjective pain measurements were collected on a visual analog scale (VAS) – the temperature of the heat stimulus and the participant’s assessment of pain intensity. Participants also fi lled in questionnaires designed to measure their temperaments and anxiety levels. We also recorded the subject’s respiratory rate. We found no signifi cant difference between the two VE’s in their analgesic effi cacy. Under both VR conditions participants endured signifi cantly higher temperatures than under the no-VR condition. We found no signifi cant differences in the infl uence of temperament or anxiety on a specifi c VE effi cacy.