Informace o publikaci
Virtual Simulations in Psychology: Evaluating Current Trends of Immersive Virtual Simulations Use in Psychological Research and Follow-up Applications
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2025 |
| Druh | Habilitační práce |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Popis | Immersive virtual reality rapidly advances across disciplines, uncovering new applications in various domains. In psychology, immersive virtual simulations aspire to become integral to research methodologies and practical applications, offering significant potential for creating ecologically valid yet controlled and safe environments for experimentation and practical use. This work aims to research the concept of human-centered simulation in psychology, resulting in the suggestion and adoption of immersive virtual simulation as a technology advancing psychological research and application. To support this idea, several specific applications of immersive virtual reality, which have been conducted and published within the author’s up-to-date research practice, are introduced and critically evaluated. The methods employed involve theoretical analysis and synthesis, which is further narrowed into a critical reassessment of the existing empirical evidence provided by the author of this thesis and his colleagues in the immersive virtual reality field. As a result, original statistical procedures applied in human evacuation spatiotemporal movement analysis are demonstrated to promote potential interconnections between virtual simulations and the machine learning domain. This part of the thesis, stemming from the broad theoretical discussion and empirical evidence, represents a novel finding, showcasing data processing from immersive virtual simulations with potential applications in agent-based modeling. In summary, this work presents novel findings in several aspects: (1) it creates a theoretical framework for human-centered simulations, including immersive virtual simulations; (2) on a theoretical level considering simulations, it connects current cognitive psychology perspectives with human interactions with the environment; (3) it establishes a basis for using virtual simulations as a foundation for effective, safe, controlled and ecologically valid research and application in psychology; (4) it summarizes and critically comments on several of the author's studies on the use of virtual reality within psychological research and applications to reassess follow-up directions of the research; and finally (5) it demonstrates new research insights in the field of evacuation modeling by linking the field of virtual simulations and agent-based modeling considering the human-in-the-loop principle. |