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Restorative Effects of Visual and Pictorial Spaces After Stress Induction in Virtual Reality

Published: 16 September 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Exposure to nature has been shown to have a positive effect on people’s mental health. Little research has compared restorative effects of simulated nature presented by different media. Here, we investigated stress recovery when viewing a computer-generated nature setting presented in visual and pictorial space in virtual reality. Participants experienced a stress induction task and were then put into one of two relaxation scenarios: they either viewed the nature scene in visual space, (they were immersed into it; presence condition), or they viewed a large depiction of it in pictorial space (picture condition). Participants’ affective state was assessed before and after stress induction, and after relaxation using the ZIPERS questionnaire. We additionally recorded electrodermal activity as a measure of physiological arousal. The results revealed that relaxation led to an increase in positive affect scores and a decrease in electrodermal activity only in the presence condition. The negative affect scores decreased significantly for both conditions similarly. Our results show that restoration is more effective in visual than in pictorial space.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Virtual reality environments for stress reduction and management: a scoping reviewVirtual Reality10.1007/s10055-024-00943-y28:1Online publication date: 27-Feb-2024
  • (2023)Virtual Reality-Based Joy Induction: The Role of Interactivity and Prior MoodCyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking10.1089/cyber.2022.025026:4(229-237)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
  1. Restorative Effects of Visual and Pictorial Spaces After Stress Induction in Virtual Reality

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    SAP '21: ACM Symposium on Applied Perception 2021
    September 2021
    109 pages
    ISBN:9781450386630
    DOI:10.1145/3474451
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Publication History

    Published: 16 September 2021

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    Author Tags

    1. Relaxation
    2. electrodermal activity
    3. nature
    4. stress reduction

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    SAP '21: ACM Symposium on Applied Perception 2021
    September 16 - 17, 2021
    Virtual Event, France

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    View all
    • (2024)Virtual reality environments for stress reduction and management: a scoping reviewVirtual Reality10.1007/s10055-024-00943-y28:1Online publication date: 27-Feb-2024
    • (2023)Virtual Reality-Based Joy Induction: The Role of Interactivity and Prior MoodCyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking10.1089/cyber.2022.025026:4(229-237)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023

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