A recent US study highlighted an effect especially inherent in virtual reality. In immersion, the perception of time is slower than in reality. However, this time compression could find positive applications in the medical field.
Virtual reality users know it well:it is not uncommon to lose all sense of time in immersion. This impression is also stronger when it comes to video games. However, a study from the University of California at Santa Cruz (United States) published on May 3, 2021 in the journal Timing &Time Perception evokes another much more important effect. Scientists have noticed a time compression which would also not be unknown to users of VR headsets.
Grayson Mullen, lead researcher of the study, claims to have experienced it while testing a helmet at a friend's house. He then had the idea of testing this effect on no less than 41 volunteers. For the occasion, he created a maze that works both in virtual reality and on a traditional screen . Two groups then tested the application, each in the two available configurations, one starting with the VR version and the other with the normal version.
The only instruction the volunteers had to follow was the following:take a break when they thought they had played for five minutes. According to the results, players who started with the virtual reality version played 72.6 seconds longer than those who started with the classic version, clearly showing a compression of time. In addition, this effect is not present in players who started with the normal screen version.
You should know that in 2011, researchers from Duke University (USA) had discovered the effect of time compression in patients undergoing chemotherapy. However, they remained focused on differences based on diagnosis.
The thing is, the new study compared the effects of the same game in VR and on a regular screen, proving that the time compression effect is actually specific to virtual reality. According to this work, virtual reality could help patients who regularly undergo long medical procedures. This would indeed both distract them, but also give them the impression that the interventions last a little less long.
