Reproduction Materials for: Social Interaction and Pain Threshold in Virtual Reality

<p><strong>PI-Provided Abstract:</strong> This experiment examined the effects of social presence and perceived location of a virtual environment on participants’ pain thresholds in a pre-registered, within-subjects experiment. First, we examined the effects of social interaction vs being alone in a virtual environment. Second, we compared a virtual environment representing a remote location to a replication of the lab environment. While the "location" of the virtual environment did affect social presence, such that participants reported greater social presence with participants who were co-located, location did not predict pain threshold. However, social interaction did predict increased pain threshold in the induced experimental thermal pain task. In other words, participants kept their hand on the hot thermode longer when interacting socially with another person. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first use of real-time social interaction in virtual reality as a distractor for experimental thermal pain, as well as the first to examine the potential interaction between social interaction and transportation to different virtual locations. While this task is not directly analogous to the experience of pain in a medical setting, this preliminary study indicates future avenues for patient treatment.</p>

<p><strong>PI（项目负责人）提供的研究摘要：</strong> 本研究为一项预先注册（pre-registered）的被试内（within-subjects）实验，旨在探究虚拟环境（virtual environment）的社会临场感（social presence）与感知位置对参与者痛觉阈值（pain threshold）的影响。首先，我们对比了虚拟环境中存在社交互动与独处两种实验条件的差异；其次，我们将代表远程地点的虚拟环境与复刻版实验室环境进行了对照。尽管虚拟环境的"位置"确实会影响社会临场感——即当参与者与其他同处一个虚拟空间的对象互动时，其报告的社会临场感更强，但环境位置并未对痛觉阈值产生预测作用。然而，在诱发型实验热痛任务（thermal pain task）中，社交互动确实能提升痛觉阈值。换言之，当参与者与他人进行社交互动时，其将手置于热刺激探头（thermode）的时长会更长。据我们所知，本研究首次将虚拟现实（virtual reality，VR）中的实时社交互动作为实验性热痛的干扰刺激，同时也是首个探究社交互动与沉浸于不同虚拟环境之间潜在交互效应的研究。尽管本实验任务与临床医疗场景中的疼痛体验并不完全等同，但这项初步研究为患者疼痛治疗的后续研究指明了可行方向。</p>