A wide range of services are provided by the Immersive Virtual Environment Testing Area (IVETA) and its staff including, for example, scientific consultation, data collection, study administration, and arranging and funding procurement of necessary scientific materials. During this reporting year, five Social and Behavioral Research Branch-initiated research projects have been served by the IVETA team. The IVETA staff contributed to data collection and processing for an in-lab protocol to evaluate participant use of a family health history data collection web application (PI: Koehly). The IVETA team developed and implemented protocols for a study assessing the influence of patient emotion on reactions to obesity-related genomic information in clinical encounters (PI: Persky). The study team has been engaged in data collection for the IVETA-based virtual reality experimental arm of this project, and extensive data processing for both this arm and another internet-based arm of this project. In addition, the IVETA team contributed to a project aiming to assess patient-physician communication around uncertainty in encounters involving prostate cancer treatment decisions (PI: Han). For this protocol, IVETA staff consulted on study design and planning, prepared a virtual reality environment to suit the project, and prepared a virtual reality protocol and system that was delivered to Maine Medical Center where offsite data collection was conducted. Members of the IVETA team also conducted data collection activies at this site. Finally, the IVETA team has processed behavioral data, and prepared to engage in an effort to code physiological data from the project. The IVETA team has maintained and administered a virtual reality-based test of participant attention in conjunction with a larger study on brain structure and function of children with ADHD (PI: Shaw). During this reporting year, the team has collected data for a project assessing specific elements of child behavior in attention tasks. Finally, the IVETA staff has contributed a project assessing the influence of patient race/ethnicity and socio-economic status on physician decision-making related to personalized medicine (PI: Bonham). During this reporting year, the team has consulted on study design and material creation, overseen programming, developed study protocols, and set up a virtual reality protocol and system to be used for offsite data collection. In addition to directly serving the research needs of the Social and Behavioral Research Branch, the IVETA team also conducts research and assessments to expand its own capabilities. During this reporting year the IVETA team has conducted a pilot study that aims to assess the feasibility and added value of including physiological assessments of participant reaction to immersive virtual clinical simulations. Analyses are completed and evaluation of outcomes is ongoing. The team has also extensively research and held meetings to discuss the inclusion of additional research tools within IVETA services. A small set of such tools are set to undergo evaluation testing in the coming year.
| Persky, Susan; Goldring, Megan R; Turner, Sara A et al. (2018) Validity of assessing child feeding with virtual reality. Appetite 123:201-207 |
| Persky, Susan (2011) Application of virtual reality methods to obesity prevention and management research. J Diabetes Sci Technol 5:333-9 |
| Persky, Susan (2011) Employing immersive virtual environments for innovative experiments in health care communication. Patient Educ Couns 82:313-7 |
