‘It still felt like the same as real life’

There is growing evidence to suggest that virtual reality (VR) can be used to support learning. One of the unique qualities of VR is presence – an authentic sense of being in a different place, of being transported somewhere else. That potentially provides a qualitatively different learning experience. 

For example, Makransky et al. (2019) found that first-year engineering undergraduates engaging in safety training using immersive VR enjoyed it more, and showed increased intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, compared with those working with a conventional safety manual. Importantly, the immersive VR group also then performed significantly better on a transfer test involving solving problems in a physical laboratory setting. This would suggest that one of the benefits of this technology is the ability for students to enact a specific skill. Sense of presence appeared to be critical to the generalisation of skills in a real-life setting.

But what is it about presence that supports the learner? And could it transform a particular kind of learning in schools?

The power of presence

In the October 2024 edition of The Psychologist, Ella Rhodes considered the work of Ivan Phelan and colleagues. Their research has explored the use of VR in order to manage pain in clinical settings. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence point to the conclusion that immersive experiences can be effective in reducing pain. Researchers found that an increase in the interactivity of the experience was associated with a decrease in the pain experienced. Phelan and colleagues suggest that this is because of the limited capacity of our attentional resources. To be effective in an interactive environment, we need to ignore irrelevant stimuli, even if those stimuli are painful.

Research into the use of VR to facilitate mindfulness draws similar conclusions. For example, Seabrook and colleagues considered both quantitative and qualitative measures in order to understand the user experience of a VR mindfulness programme. In their analysis of qualitative data, researchers cite presence and engagement as important themes. In terms of presence, participants reported that their focus on the virtual environment contributed to their sense of their 'real-world' concerns being reduced. Additionally, participants described their sense of engagement, a sense of being connected to the experience, and in the words of one participant, being 'involved in the little details of this place'. There are clear similarities here to the findings of Phelan and colleagues: for both groups of participants the occupation of their attentional resources was significant. But this research also points to the possibility that presence can enable the individual to detach or distance themselves from their 'real-world' experience.

So if we accept that a perception of presence might be useful for clinical reasons, how can this be applied to education? Research into the use of VR for medical training might point us in the right direction. Saab and colleagues considered the use of VR for nurse training. Presence was considered important in terms of contextual transfer of learning: nurses were able to understand and visualise clinical situations more effectively. But it was also seen as important because it created a safe space to fail; only you can see what you are getting right and getting wrong.

Presence may therefore be meaningful for learning in general. Evidence from the wider field of VR use suggests that a sense of presence enables users to channel attention, detach from their current social context and operate in an environment of psychological safety. We would argue that these benefits of presence are essential to all learners. But might presence specifically support the development of vital cognitive processes in children?

Executive Function training in schools

Executive function (EF) is a set of higher order cognitive processes through which learning and everyday goals are realised. It's the fundamental building blocks of how we plan, execute, monitor and regulate tasks, and impact our cognitive, socioemotional and behavioural responses.

Although there are a wide range of models to help us understand EF composition, there is broad agreement on the importance of EF to a wide range of outcomes. Where deficits in EF are identified, individuals may be at risk in several ways, including school readiness, academic achievement, reading and maths. EF is also involved in the regulation of behaviour, and impacts socioemotional outcomes. 

Effective EF training, therefore, has the capacity to change lives. But the question remains – what is the most effective way of delivering EF training to children?

In our most recent research (as yet unpublished), we have been considering the impact of VR based EF training for primary school aged students. Twelve 15-minute training sessions were delivered over the course of four weeks, and children were assessed for cognitive flexibility, working memory and inhibitory control before and after the training. Results indicate that children exposed to VR based EF training demonstrated significant changes to cognitive flexibility as compared to the control. Initial evidence seems to point to the fact that this medium is effective for improving EF; results from our earlier study may help to explain why.

In this qualitative study, which used a think-aloud protocol, we explored the experiences of primary school-aged children using VR based EF training. Children's perceptions of presence were very much linked to what it enabled them to do. Their perceptions of presence portrayed them as active users, and they enjoyed feeling in control of the experience. One participant commented that 'you're moving your hands and it feels like you are interacting literally with this'. In addition to this, their presence in the virtual world was also framed in terms of a detachment with the real world. However, although children described feelings of being immersed, these were countered by an expressed awareness of its unreality, for example 'it wasn't real life, but it still felt like the same as real life'. The examples that children used indicated that they were aware of the mediated nature of the experience, in the words of one participant: 'it's like I'm in the TV'. In our small sample of children, presence appears to have fulfilled the same functions: enabling them to channel attention, detach from their current social context and operate in an environment of psychological safety.

Understanding Executive Function in context

One model of EF which may shine further light on the importance of presence is Zelazo's model of hot and cool EF. It is useful because it includes a consideration of how EF skills develop in context, rather than in isolation. This model suggests that the EF skills needed to succeed in a task will differ according to the emotional and motivational context. 'Hot' EF are those skills which are needed in contexts with a high affective or motivational content. 'Cool' EF are those skills which are needed in contexts with a neutral affective or motivational content. 

Within an educational context, this of course makes sense. Any learning task cannot be considered meaningful (or effective) in isolation. It is the context of how it is delivered; who it is delivered by, and in what style, and who it is delivered to, and what their expectations of learning are, and a hundred other things that make it meaningful.

There are two features of this model which are particularly relevant when considering how children's EF development can be supported. Firstly, research tells us that 'hot' EF is more cognitively strenuous than 'cool' EF. In effect, the processing of emotional context adds more load. Secondly, there may be different developmental pathways for 'hot' and 'cool' EF. In their research, Poon (2018) found that the development of 'cool' EF was linear, whereas the development of 'hot' EF slowed in early adolescence. That is, whereas teenagers will be more adept at 'cool' EF than their younger peers, they are likely to have very similar abilities for 'hot' EF.

So how can we use this to support young people with executive function difficulty? Providing learning environments which are 'cooler' may be one way to do this. Reducing the emotional and motivational burden of a learning task may support children to use 'cool' EF which is more likely to be stronger and more efficient. 

Perhaps presence has a role to play here. VR creates a change in the perceived environment, and crucially one in which the teacher, and the social context, is not present. This could potentially lead to a change in their psychosocial response: the student's actions become less about the teacher and social interaction, and more about themselves. This may be particularly salient for adolescents, for whom 'hot' EF may be more arduous. From this perspective, VR may enable young people to develop EF skills in a much 'cooler' environment.

Teachers' perceptions of Virtual Reality

Although evidence suggests that presence may provide a range of benefits to learners, use of VR in schools will also depend on the experience of teachers and educators, and it is in this area that more work may need to be done, as differences in the experience of presence may potentially lead to differences in technology adoption.

Our qualitative study also considered the experiences of adults and identified some noteworthy differences. Whereas children were more likely to describe the experience of using VR in pragmatic terms and in terms of what they could do; adults were more likely to describe the experience in hedonic terms and with how it made them feel. Interestingly, adult participants were more likely to express concern about presence; its ability to make you feel disconnected and separate. Whereas for children, the opportunity to detach was described in positive terms, for adults this was described as 'blocking out the world'. For some users at least, the perception of presence was understood in negative, rather than positive terms. A more nuanced understanding of presence may help to change minds about the suitability of this technology.

• Susie Hindman is currently working towards her PhD, researching the use of Virtual Reality to deliver cognitive training in Primary Schools

References

Diamond, A. & Ling, D.S. (2019). Review of the Evidence on, and Fundamental Questions About, Efforts to Improve Executive Functions, Including Working Memory. In Cognitive and Working Memory Training. 

Farhi, M., Gliksman, Y. & Shalev, L. (2024). Cognitive Control among Primary- and Middle-School Students and Their Associations with Math Achievement. Education Sciences, 14(2).

Hindman, S., King, R. & Pereira, A. (2024). Virtual reality based executive function training in schools: The experience of primary school-aged children, teachers and training teaching assistants. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 16.

Johann, V. & Karbach, J. (2021). Educational application of cognitive training. In Cognitive Training. Springer International Publishing. 

Makransky, G., Borre-Gude, S. & Mayer, R.E. (2019). Motivational and cognitive benefits of training in immersive virtual reality based on multiple assessments. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 35(6), 691–707. 

Phelan, I. et al. (2023). Playing your pain away: designing a virtual reality physical therapy for children with upper limb motor impairment. Virtual Reality, 27(1), pp. 173–185.

Poon, K. (2018). Hot and cool executive functions in adolescence: Development and contributions to important developmental outcomes. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(JAN). 

Saab, M.M. et al. (2021). Incorporating virtual reality in nurse education: A qualitative study of nursing students' perspectives. Nurse Education Today, 105. 

Seabrook, E. et al. (2020). Understanding how virtual reality can support mindfulness practice: Mixed methods study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(3). 

Skarbez, R., Brooks, F.P. & Whitton, M.C. (2017). A survey of presence and related concepts. In ACM Computing Surveys (Vol. 50, Issue 6). Association for Computing Machinery. 

Zelazo, P.D., Carter, A., Reznick, J.S. & Frye, D. (1997). Early development of executive function: A problem-solving framework. Review of General Psychology, 1(2), 198–226.