What is it about?
Investigated whether Virtual Reality (VR) has the potential to be a research tool for studying consciousness and cognition. 12 23–30 yr olds participated in 2 sessions of a VR game, located in a VR arcade. Both individual differences in absorption (leading to varying degrees of interaction and experience in VR), and the specific cognitive set with which the participant enters the VR (instructions emphasizing either introspective sensitization or metaphoric-symbolic cognition) were considered. High absorption was found to predispose Ss to experience an altered state of consciousness. Furthermore, this susceptibility was moderated by the cognitive set employed. Unfortunately, the particular VR game was rather violent, and tended to make Ss "turn off" the focus on their own subjective experience.
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Perspectives
In this paper, we looked at the feasibility of inducing an ASC with the aid of suitable instruction (introspective sensitization, or symbolic thinking) during involvement in a virtual reality (VR) game.
Professor Joseph Glicksohn
Bar-Ilan University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Explorations in Virtual Reality: Absorption, Cognition and Altered State of Consciousness, Imagination Cognition and Personality, October 1997, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.2190/ftuu-glc5-gbt8-9ruw.
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