Virtual Reality
The Family Research Center's virtual reality laboratory supports simulation software designed for the study and prevention of violence. The lab is located in Heroy Hall, the largest of our shared research facilities on the SMU campus. Our equipment is also mobile, allowing for virtual reality simulations to happen at various project sites.
Numerous projects currently utilize the virtual reality software:
Teen Relationship Violence
This project is a collaboration between SMU and the Dallas Independent School District. One component of the study utilizes virtual reality, where teens will participate in role plays simulating situations in which a bystander could intervene to prevent teen relationship violence. Teens wear headphones and goggles through which they experience the virtual environment. The fact that teens are only able to see and hear the virtual environment while participating in the virtual reality fosters immersion. Teens interact with an avatar, whose speech, gestures, and physical actions are controlled by an actor who creates the interactions that the student will experience.
A fully interactive experience, the virtual reality technology creates realistic, ecologically valid situations for observing teens' behavior in social interactions that present the opportunity to intervene as a bystander.