NeSAs-VR
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Negative Symptom Assessment in Virtual Reality. Developing a novel virtual reality assessment for negative symptoms of schizophrenia and evaluating its acceptability, feasibility and psychometric properties.
IRAS ID
277457
Contact name
Matteo Cella
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King’s College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Schizophrenia is a serious mental health condition characterised by positive symptoms (such as hearing voices) and negative symptoms (NS). NS are reductions in motivation, enjoyment, social interests, emotional expression & speech. Current NS assessments cannot separate NS from other issues someone diagnosed with schizophrenia may experience, for example difficulty concentrating. NS can create profound barriers to recovery, therefore developing accurate assessment tools is crucial.
Moreover, common NS assessments require highly trained experts and time, which obstructs routine use. Finally, measures developed with service users’ are missing, despite evidence of this leading to higher completion rates and alternative constructs.
This study will develop an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) NS assessment. VR places people in 3D-environments resembling reality that trigger similar emotional and behavioural responses. A computerized VR assessment might provide more objectivity and could assess multiple aspects of behaviour during (simulated) everyday activities.
Recruitment will be 42 individuals experiencing NS, and 30 healthy controls. Real life situations, such as inspecting objects in a room, cooking a meal, and a social interaction will be reproduced in VR. Participants’ responses will be used to estimate NS. The study will be carried out in two phases.
Phase 1 (2.5h per participant) will consist primarily of participant feedback. The measures and its acceptability will be assessed through interviews and questionnaires. Phase 2 (2h) will evaluate how well the VR-assessment measures NS by comparing VR-NS scores to existing measures of NS. Moreover, relations to measures of global outcomes such as work or social functioning will be explored by comparing them to the VR-NS scores. The study will be carried out by King’s College London researchers and recruit service users from the South London and Maudsley NHS trust.
REC name
Wales REC 3
REC reference
21/WA/0086
Date of REC Opinion
1 Apr 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion