Virtual experience, real impact: the influence of virtual reality on memory and behaviour

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly applied in healthcare; e.g., as a form of medical education, or to facilitate treatment or rehabilitation. However, there are still many untouched opportunities. The aim of this thesis is to better our understanding of how healthcare can benefit from VR by exploring two novel VR paradigms. Part 1 of the thesis provides a fruitful basis for the use of VR to simulate exposure to psychological trauma and subsequent trauma symptoms. This ‘analogue model of psychological trauma’ provides a novel method to study the basic mechanisms underlying trauma symptom development, and to create and test interventions. Part 2 provides a framework for the use of ‘memory-related perceptual illusions’ to affect physical activity. This paradigm is based on how we memorize spatial representations of our environment and may be useful in the field of rehabilitation. Taken together, the work presented in this thesis stresses the relevance of establishing which manipulations VR allows for, testing their user effects, and exploring whether these manipulations can be of use in the field of healthcare. Such knowledge provides useful guidelines for the development of future VR applications.