Virtual reality in social skills training for people with schizophrenia.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-260
Author(s):  
Catarina Oliveira ◽  
Sara Faria ◽  
Raquel Simões de Almeida ◽  
Cristina Queirós ◽  
António Marques
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Social Skills ◽  
Social Skills Training ◽  
Skills Training

Virtual reality in social skills training programs for people with schizophrenia: A systematic review and focus group

2021 ◽  
pp. 030802262110113
Author(s):  
Catarina Oliveira ◽  
Raquel Simões de Almeida ◽  
António Marques
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Social Skills ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Social Skills Training ◽  
Occupational Therapists ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Training Programme ◽  
Cochrane Library

Introduction This study aims to determine the guidelines for the design of a social skills training programme for people with schizophrenia using virtual reality. Methods This article encompasses two studies: Study 1, a systematic review of five articles indexed in the databases B-on, PubMed, Clinical trials and Cochrane Library (2010–2020); Study 2, a focus group of occupational therapists trained in mental health and multimedia professionals, in which they discussed the outline of such a programme. Results A set of guidelines were identified as central and consensual which should be included in the programme. It must have multilevel logic and gradual learning, with simulations of everyday situations, in which it is possible to practise the skills of conversation and communication. Virtual reality provides people with schizophrenia with unlimited opportunities, enhancing a personalized intervention. Conclusion Social skills training could be part of the treatment for people with schizophrenia, and virtual reality is a promising tool to complement traditional training, although still little implemented in mental health services. Occupational therapists have a prominent role in the development and application of this because of their knowledge of activity analysis and their ability to facilitate the generalization of skills in different contexts.

scholarly journals The acceptability and feasibility of a novel virtual reality based social skills training game for schizophrenia: Preliminary findings

2018 ◽  
Vol 270 ◽  
pp. 496-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura H. Adery ◽  
Megan Ichinose ◽  
Lénie J. Torregrossa ◽  
Joshua Wade ◽  
Heathman Nichols ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Social Skills ◽  
Social Skills Training ◽  
Skills Training

scholarly journals T204. NOVEL VIRTUAL REALITY SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (suppl_1) ◽  
pp. S195-S196
Author(s):  
Lénie Torregrossa ◽  
Laura Hieber Adery ◽  
Megan Ichinose ◽  
Heathman Nichols ◽  
Alena Gizdić ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Social Skills ◽  
Social Skills Training ◽  
Skills Training

scholarly journals T227. VIRTUAL REALITY SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING IMPROVES SOCIAL ATTENTION IN INDIVIDUALS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S319-S319
Author(s):  
Lénie Torregrossa ◽  
Megan Ichinose ◽  
Laura Hieber Adery ◽  
Heathman Nichols ◽  
Joshua Wade ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Social Skills ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Social Skills Training ◽  
Negative Symptoms ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Social Attention ◽  
Social Interventions ◽  
Vr Training

Abstract Background Social impairment is a core feature of schizophrenia presenting a major barrier to recovery. Although antipsychotic medications can reduce psychotic symptoms, social impairments often persist, contributing to poor outcome. Validated interventions, such as Social Skills Training (Bellack et al., 2004), target a broad range of social domains but they yield only modest effect sizes for social outcome (Pfammatter et al, 2006). Moreover, conventional social interventions suffer from high burden on the clients and therapists, low adherence, lack of personalization, and low generalizability. Importantly, social interventions are not widely available. Virtual reality (VR) offers a viable alternative to conventional therapies with several advantages including high acceptability, an extensive repertoire of stimuli, low-burden, low-cost and safety (Strickland, 1997). Importantly, VR allows for a precise targeting of social cognitive mechanisms. Social attention, the fast orientation and allocation of resources to social stimuli can be indexed by tracking eye movements. Abnormal eye scanning behavior during social interactions has been linked to poor social functioning in schizophrenia (Brunet-Gouet & Decety, 2006). We designed a VR-based social skills training game to directly target social attention in schizophrenia. Methods Eighteen individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) participated in the VR training game twice a week for 5 weeks. Eye movement patterns were recorded throughout the training. Subjects were required to solve social “missions” (e.g., obtain personal information through conversations with avatars) in different naturalistic scenarios. To start a mission, participants had to fixate on the chosen avatar. The latency to engage in a social interaction was indexed by the fixation time (social engagement latency). Each session consisted of 12 missions. We compared social engagement latency and eye gaze patterns pre- and post-training to assess the efficacy of the VR social skills training program. Results Social engagement latency significantly decreased after 10 sessions (d=0.78). This result suggests that prosocial attention benefitted from VR training. We also found that the standard deviation of dwell time (i.e., proportion of time spent looking at the avatar’s face during a conversation) significantly increased across training sessions (d=0.56). This result suggests an increased modulation of interpersonal engagement during social interaction. Additionally, participants’ emotion recognition ability significantly increased (η2 = 0.27), and negative symptoms significantly decreased (η2=0.34) from pre- to post- training. Importantly, these changes in social attention correlated with improvement in negative symptoms. Discussion Simulated and targeted social interactions with avatars in VR significantly improved social attention in individuals with schizophrenia. Importantly, improvements in negative symptoms and emotion perception after training suggest that this training protocol has an impact on a broad range of social functions. VR training is a promising alternative to traditional psychosocial interventions to target specific mechanisms underlying social functioning in schizophrenia.

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