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A Trip to the Beach: Experimental Investigation of Mood, the Body, and Presence in Virtual Reality Meditation

This study sought to explore the effects of virtual reality (VR) as a technology that can potentially improve guided meditation practices; VR guided meditation sessions and audio guided meditation sessions were compared. Specifically, this study investigated VR’s impact on an individual’s self-perception of psychological factors that reflect mood or emotion; it also examined VR’s impact on an individual’s self-perception of presence and relaxation. After examination, VR guided meditation had no significant impact on an individual’s self-perception of mood and emotion or self-reported feelings of relaxation. However, guided VR meditation had a significant impact on an individual’s self-reported perception of presence; participants who meditated with VR felt “as if they were at the beach.” Although this study demonstrated that a fairly inexpensive VR system can enhance feelings of presence, that sense of presence did not enhance feelings of well-being and relaxation; this could be attributed to the novelty effect. / 2020-09-06

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uoregon.edu/oai:scholarsbank.uoregon.edu:1794/23804
Date06 September 2018
CreatorsBennett, Spencer
ContributorsDavis, Donna
PublisherUniversity of Oregon
Source SetsUniversity of Oregon
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
RightsCreative Commons BY 4.0-US

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