title: Presence, involvement and efficacy of a virtual reality intervention on pain.
abstract: We explored the impact of an interactive VR environment on pain cognitions (in vivo catastrophizing and pain self-efficacy) and pain-related measures: pain threshold, pain tolerance, Pain Sensitivity Range (PSR), pain intensity and time estimation in a sample of healthy students. Sense of presence is essential to conduct a psychological treatment; if patients are not able to involve themselves in a virtual world they cannot experience relevant emotions, and the desired processes that are necessary for most psychological treatments will not occur. However, some authors argue that presence must be distinguished from the degree of engagement, involvement in the portrayed environment. The results obtained in our study are consistent with this view, since the Involvement scale of the IPQ did not correlate with any of the measures related with the treatment's efficacy.
authors.affiliation: University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. jgutierrezm@ub.edu
authors.forename: Jose
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gutierrez-Maldonado
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gutierrez-Martinez
authors.forename: Desiree
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Loreto
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Peñaloza
authors.forename: Ruben
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nieto
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D059408:Pain Management; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014584:User-Computer Interface