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Adolescent Responses to Varying Environments in Virtual Reality Simulations

NCT04465240 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 107

Last updated 2024-06-07

Study results available
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Summary

The objective of this study, named THRIVE (The Research In Virtual Environments Study), is to test hypotheses for how neighborhood environments influence stress and emotion, as a mechanism by which they may influence health. Neighborhood environments may have both acute influences on stress-related processes, but also may have lifespan effects due to the chronic, cumulative effects of repeated exposures and the long-term toll of adapting to adverse neighborhood environments. However, assessing neighborhood influences on stress and emotion is methodologically challenging. This study develops such a novel, alternative approach to address these questions by deploying a virtual reality (VR) based model of neighborhood disadvantage and affluence that creates an immersive experience approximating the experience of being in different neighborhoods. In this study, this model will be applied to understand neighborhood effects in a diverse sample of adolescents (n = 130) from a range of disadvantaged and affluent neighborhoods. The proposed study will employ a randomized experiment (n = 65 per condition), with online questionnaires and a single study session, to determine (a) if virtual exposure to neighborhood disadvantage elicits differences in emotion and stress reactivity; (2) if growing up in a disadvantaged neighborhood results in habituation or sensitization to different neighborhood characteristics; and (3) if chronic stress results in habituation or sensitization to different neighborhood characteristics. This research will develop an innovative methodology that will help establish the role that neighborhoods may play in eliciting stress as well as the processes of adaptation to chronic stress and chronic neighborhood exposures. In addition, it will help establish a method that can be utilized more broadly to study contextual and social environmental influences on psychological and biological risk in adolescence.

Conditions

  • Residential Characteristics
  • Emotions
  • Stress, Psychological
  • Stress, Physiological

Interventions

OTHER

Virtual reality

Participants are immersed in a neighborhood environment in virtual reality

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

    collaborator NIH

  • University of Southern California

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Daniel A Hackman, PhD · University of Southern California

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
14 Years
Max Age
17 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-10-06
Primary Completion
2023-04-22
Completion
2023-04-22

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04465240 on ClinicalTrials.gov