Effect of a Full Immersive Virtual Reality Intervention on Selective Attention in Children

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of two educational interventions, a program based on Full Immersive Virtual Reality games and a Typical Training program, in Selective Attention (SA) of children aged 8-10 years old. Forty-eight girls of elementary school from the city of Komotini, in Greece, participated in this study. They were randomly divided into three individual groups of 16 children each, one Control Group (CG) and two experimental groups. The CG did not receive any structured SA training program, while the two experimental groups attended a program focused on improving SA for 6 weeks, twice a week for 24 min, each time. The participants of FIVE group attended a full immersive program in Playstation4 VR and the participants of TT group attended a typical training to the gym. Before, after and one –month after the interventions SA was estimated using Super Lab, recording the number and the RT of correct answers of relevant and irrelevant questions to volleyball. Two-way analyses of variance with repeated measures were conducted to determine the effect of training program groups and measurements across number and RT of correct answers on SA performance. Analysis of the data illustrated that the post-test SA scores and the one –month retention test SA scores were remarkably greater than pre-test SA scores for both experimental groups and not for the CG. In conclusion exergames VR are effective tools for improving SA such as typical training.