Willem-Paul Brinkman, Veling, Wim, Dorrestijn, Emily, Sandino, Guntur, Vakili, Vanessa, van der Gaag, Mark. Using virtual reality to study paranoia in individuals with and without psychosis. Preprint 2011.
A virtual reality environment was created to study psychotic symptoms of patients that experience psychosis. In the environment people could navigate through a bar with a gamepad while wearing a head mounted display. Their task was to find five virtual characters that have a small label number on their chest. The density and ethnic appearance of the virtual characters in the bar was controlled. To study the effect of these two factors a 2 by 2 experiment was conducted with a group of 24 non-patients, and two patients. For the non-patient group results showed a significant main effect for density on participant{\textquoteright}s physiological response, their behaviour, reported level of discomfort, and their ability to remember place and location of the numbered avatars. The avatar ethnicity had significant effect on non-patients{\textquoteright} physiological responses. Comparison between the two patients and non-patient group shows difference in physiological responses, behaviour and reported level of discomfort.