About this Research Topic
Occupational tasks requiring high levels of precision and accuracy (e.g., surgeons, aircraft pilots, law enforcement) rely on individuals to develop skills to optimize task performance. Skill acquisition, development, and maintenance often involve retaining and combining knowledge about a domain and then applying, generalizing, and transferring knowledge to perform complex tasks. These skills develop over time through experience, but if left unpracticed can also be vulnerable to decay. There is a growing concern about reduced attentiveness and preparation to deal with skill degradation stemming from the increasing prevalence of automation and subsequent decrease in skill practice.
Virtual reality (VR) has presented the opportunity to evaluate technical skills and task proficiency with many occupational tasks, exemplified by the extant number of training, connected worker, and digital assistant platforms. However, less has been explored on using XR for other types of skills such as non-technical and psychological skills (e.g., cognitive, coping, behavioural, interpersonal, social, and affective) for individuals working in high-performance occupations, where these types of skills are critical to safety.
VR constitutes a crucial experimental tool that can be used to investigate new, objective, neuroscience-based methods for psychological skills assessment and training. In real situations, stimuli are hard to control and make an analysis of human responses complicated. VR-based assessment tools solve this issue by recreating situations with key elements analogous to those in the real world, but the presentation of the stimuli and the measures can be synchronized in a very precise way. When direct or indirect measures of brain activity are taken while the user is immersed in the virtual environment, the obtained data are very similar as if they were measured in a real situation. Therefore, VR is increasingly important in the emerging fields of Organizational Neuroscience and Computational Psychology.
There is a growing trend toward affordable VR and human activity measurement technologies that increasingly resemble the VR systems once found only in advanced VR laboratories. The adoption of VR is likely to involve smaller, less expensive, and more portable solutions. This enables assessment of psychological skills capabilities anytime and anywhere, particularly for occupations with ambulatory tasks and austere environments. More importantly, it advances the development of tools that allow neural activity to be understood “in the wild” and that can automatically map human responses with psychological skills, lessening the confounds of skills vs. knowledge and task proficiency.
This Research Topic poses three fundamental research questions:
1. How do adult individuals acquire, develop, or maintain psychological skills through virtual reality, particularly in high-performance occupations where these skills are critical to safety?
2. Which neurophysiological signals coupled with VR technology are best suited to assess/detect/train psychological skills?
3. What advanced data processing techniques (e.g., machine learning, artificial intelligence) perform best depending on the psychological skills to be assessed/trained?
With the aim to comprehensively review the recent progress in VR with regard to psychological skills, this Research Topic calls for submissions that cover new theory approaches, algorithms and technologies in extended reality (XR) applications including virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and augmented reality (AR) covering the following areas (but not limited to):
– Psychological skills (e.g., cognitive skills, coping skills, behavioural skills, interpersonal skills, social skills, affective skills)
– Skill acquisition, development, maintenance, vulnerability, and decay in healthy adults
– Skills that are generalizable and translatable across tasks
– Skills may span across disciplines, occupations, and applications
– Measurement or detection of skills within XR
– Practical applications for occupations: training, connected worker, and digital assistant.
– Use of advanced XR-based interfaces (e.g., virtual humans) for the assessment/training of psychological dimensions.
– Use of XR-based digital biomarkers for psychological skills assessment.
Virtual reality (VR) has presented the opportunity to evaluate technical skills and task proficiency with many occupational tasks, exemplified by the extant number of training, connected worker, and digital assistant platforms. However, less has been explored on using XR for other types of skills such as non-technical and psychological skills (e.g., cognitive, coping, behavioural, interpersonal, social, and affective) for individuals working in high-performance occupations, where these types of skills are critical to safety.
VR constitutes a crucial experimental tool that can be used to investigate new, objective, neuroscience-based methods for psychological skills assessment and training. In real situations, stimuli are hard to control and make an analysis of human responses complicated. VR-based assessment tools solve this issue by recreating situations with key elements analogous to those in the real world, but the presentation of the stimuli and the measures can be synchronized in a very precise way. When direct or indirect measures of brain activity are taken while the user is immersed in the virtual environment, the obtained data are very similar as if they were measured in a real situation. Therefore, VR is increasingly important in the emerging fields of Organizational Neuroscience and Computational Psychology.
There is a growing trend toward affordable VR and human activity measurement technologies that increasingly resemble the VR systems once found only in advanced VR laboratories. The adoption of VR is likely to involve smaller, less expensive, and more portable solutions. This enables assessment of psychological skills capabilities anytime and anywhere, particularly for occupations with ambulatory tasks and austere environments. More importantly, it advances the development of tools that allow neural activity to be understood “in the wild” and that can automatically map human responses with psychological skills, lessening the confounds of skills vs. knowledge and task proficiency.
This Research Topic poses three fundamental research questions:
1. How do adult individuals acquire, develop, or maintain psychological skills through virtual reality, particularly in high-performance occupations where these skills are critical to safety?
2. Which neurophysiological signals coupled with VR technology are best suited to assess/detect/train psychological skills?
3. What advanced data processing techniques (e.g., machine learning, artificial intelligence) perform best depending on the psychological skills to be assessed/trained?
With the aim to comprehensively review the recent progress in VR with regard to psychological skills, this Research Topic calls for submissions that cover new theory approaches, algorithms and technologies in extended reality (XR) applications including virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and augmented reality (AR) covering the following areas (but not limited to):
– Psychological skills (e.g., cognitive skills, coping skills, behavioural skills, interpersonal skills, social skills, affective skills)
– Skill acquisition, development, maintenance, vulnerability, and decay in healthy adults
– Skills that are generalizable and translatable across tasks
– Skills may span across disciplines, occupations, and applications
– Measurement or detection of skills within XR
– Practical applications for occupations: training, connected worker, and digital assistant.
– Use of advanced XR-based interfaces (e.g., virtual humans) for the assessment/training of psychological dimensions.
– Use of XR-based digital biomarkers for psychological skills assessment.
Keywords: cognitive skills, coping skills, behavioral skills, interpersonal skills, social skills, affective skills, extended reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
