Training skills and resilience with Virtual-Reality: theory and applications

为我们提供有关骚乱、事故、灾难和暴力事件的新闻的记者生活和工作在恶劣的环境中。这些经历可能会引起人类的本能反应，从而将人的生命置于危险之中。这些经历还可能造成焦虑、创伤和创伤后应激障碍(PTSD)，并产生长期后果。据估计，每5名记者中就有1人在与工作有关的事件中遭受创伤后应激障碍(Feinstein等人，2002年)。在目睹敌对行动和暴力的同时，自我调节情绪和保持控制的能力对在敌对环境中工作的记者和其他人至关重要。这项研究的主要目标是了解和建立应对在恶劣环境中工作的心理挑战的韧性。该项目与Headset建立了合作关系，Headset是一个屡获殊荣的组织，以一种创新的方式为记者提供培训：使用身临其境的虚拟现实。身临其境的虚拟现实是一种很有希望的方式，可以增强对敌对环境的适应能力，因为它创造了模拟但现实的场景，记者可以在其中体验可能发生的情况，并在错误无关紧要的安全空间中练习保护自己的策略。这样的培训可以帮助记者提高自我意识，快速反应，避免错误，最终拯救生命。这一博士项目研究了复原力培训的哪些特点使他们能够有效地构建受训者的个人复原力，以及与传统培训相比，基于沉浸式IVR的复原力培训如何在见习记者中培养复原力。通过与耳机合作进行的一系列随机实验，该项目分析了沉浸式虚拟现实培训对记者自我意识、自我调节和幸福感的影响，是什么使其有效，效果持续了多久。该项目还将调查虚拟现实体验在多大程度上可以被更广泛地用于培训社会认知技能，以减少偏见，降低人际关系中的冲突。这位博士生加入了一个由研究人员和专业人员组成的蓬勃发展的跨学科团队，他们在设计和评估虚拟现实培训以发展社会认知技能方面拥有经验。监管团队在定量和定性方法论、行为经济学和心理学方面拥有专业知识。

The journalists that provide us with news about riots, accidents, disasters, and violent incidences live and work in hostile environments. These experiences can cause automatic human reactions which can put the person's life at risk. These experiences can also create anxiety, trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with long-term consequences. It is estimated that 1 in 5 journalists suffer from PTSD in relation to work-related events (Feinstein et al., 2002). The ability to self-regulate emotions and maintain control while witnessing hostilities and violence is of crucial importance for journalists and others who operate in hostile environments. The primary goal of this research is to understand and build resilience towards the psychological challenges of working in hostile environments. The project builds a collaboration with HeadSet, an award-winning organisation that provides training for journalists in an innovative way: using immersive virtual reality. Immersive virtual reality is a promising way to build resilience to hostile environments because it creates simulated yet realistic scenarios where journalists can experience situations that may occur to them and practice strategies to protect themselves in a safe space where mistakes are inconsequential. Such training can help journalists to be more self-aware, react quickly, avoid mistakes, and ultimately save lives. This PhD project studies which characteristics of resilience training make them effective in building trainees' individual resilience, and how immersive IVR-based resilience training develops resilience in trainee journalists relative to traditional trainings. Using a series of randomized experiments conducted in collaboration with HeadSet, the project analyses the impacts of immersive virtual reality training on journalists self-awareness, self-regulation and wellbeing, what makes them effective and how long the effects last. The project will also investigate the extent to which virtual reality experiences can be used more broadly to train socio-cognitive skills that reduce prejudices and de-escalate conflict in interpersonal relationships. The PhD student joins a thriving, interdisciplinarity team of researchers and professionals which has experiences in designing and evaluating virtual reality training for the development of socio-cognitive skills. The supervisory team has expertise in quantitative and qualitative methodology, behavioural economics and psychology.