The relationship of visual and aural perspective with decentering in virtual reality

Abstract

<br/><br/>Several areas of application for virtual reality technologies have seen significant growth recently, including mindfulness practice. This paper investigates the relationship between the mindfulness-related construct of decentering, i.e., detaching oneself from automatic thinking and observing one's thoughts and emotions, and body representation within virtual reality. Using a within-subjects approach, we investigated whether a third-person perspective, both in terms of visual and aural representation, affects decentering in virtual reality. This was done using a virtual reality application that presented a guided body-scan meditation in virtual reality and utilised these different forms of perspective. Our results do not show a significant effect of either form of perspective on decentering in virtual reality.