VR in Psychological Education: Using 360-degree Videos to Teach Students About Dementia

Virtual reality (VR) has been shown to have a positive impact on learning procedural knowledge, and knowledge related to spatial processing. In this study we investigated whether virtual reality could aid learning of contextual and declarative knowledge, specifically knowledge about (neuro)psychological diseases. Seventy-one participants were tested in two experimental groups and one control group. Within the experimental groups, participants were either asked to watch four short virtual reality simulations of patients with dementia, or to read a short text about them. We assessed their knowledge with twenty questions about the studied material. Participants also answered questions about their stress level and filled in the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire. We found that participants who were asked to read about dementia scored significantly higher on the knowledge test than participants in the control group (p < .01). Participants who were asked to watch the VR simulation did not...Show moreVirtual reality (VR) has been shown to have a positive impact on learning procedural knowledge, and knowledge related to spatial processing. In this study we investigated whether virtual reality could aid learning of contextual and declarative knowledge, specifically knowledge about (neuro)psychological diseases. Seventy-one participants were tested in two experimental groups and one control group. Within the experimental groups, participants were either asked to watch four short virtual reality simulations of patients with dementia, or to read a short text about them. We assessed their knowledge with twenty questions about the studied material. Participants also answered questions about their stress level and filled in the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire. We found that participants who were asked to read about dementia scored significantly higher on the knowledge test than participants in the control group (p < .01). Participants who were asked to watch the VR simulation did not differ significantly from the other two groups on their knowledge test scores (p > .10, in both cases). Additionally, participants in the reading group showed higher levels of stress after completing the knowledge test than participants in the VR group (p = .03). We did not find any effects of empathy on learning (p = .66). These results suggested that the text method is superior to the VR method and to not studying. The results further suggested potential in the VR method seeing the performance in this group lay between the reading and control groups. We concluded that the materials used in this study might have partially obscured the effect of the VR method. The videos were originally made for nursing students, and not to match the questions of the knowledge test, which could have caused discrepancies between the two. As the effectiveness of text was demonstrated, we suggest integrating it in the VR method which could lead to an improvement of the effectiveness of studying with VR materials.Show less

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VR in Psychological Education: Using 360-degree Videos to Teach Students About Dementia