Effects of Semantically Irrelevant Virtual Reality Experience on Memory and Emotion (FIRM)

January 30, 2026 updated by: Texas Tech University

Effects of a Semantically Irrelevant Virtual Reality Experience on Memory and Emotion After Watching a Traumatic Event: Randomized Controlled Experimental Study

First responders at the Federal, State and local level are those on the front lines of providing support to their communities during an emergency or a disaster. Their work domains are emergency public security, firefighting, law enforcement, emergency response, and emergency medical care. Due to the inherent characteristics of the jobs they perform, they are constantly exposed to very stressful, demanding and dangerous work environments. Such an exposure often leads to mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). More than 80 percent of first responders experience traumatic events on their job duty. Various efforts to treat about trauma have been made to address the first responders' mental health. However, existing interventions are not directly targeted at the causes of mental health problems, which is the memory of the adverse events. The objective the proposed research is to investigate the effect of immersive virtual reality (VR) experience on the memory of an adverse event (e.g., fire).

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Background: First responders, such as firefighters, experience significant mental health issues due to the high-stress nature of their work. Existing mental health interventions, such as meditation and debriefing, despite their benefits, do not target cognitive processing of traumatic events such as memory and emotion.

Objective: This work aims to examine effects of semantically irrelevant virtual reality (VR) content to intervene in the retrieval of an adverse event memory and its associated emotions. Cognitive models of posttraumatic stress disorder posit that exposure to stimuli that are similar to a previous trauma acts as a trigger for retrieval of the associated memory and bodily reaction (eg, elevated heart rate). This work uses semantically irrelevant VR as an intervention to interrupt the retrieval of the traumatic memory by placing a participant in a VR environment that has a distant semantic connection to the trauma.

Methods: A total of 107 participants recruited from a large public university in Texas was randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: control (n=33), comparison (n=37), and intervention (n=37). In stage 1, participants in all groups watched a short video of an actual severe house fire to create a traumatic event memory. In stage 2, the control group stayed seated without doing anything, the comparison group read a paragraph about the Egyptian Ocean as semantically irrelevant follow-up information, and the intervention group watched a 360° VR video of the Egyptian Ocean that features opposite attributes to the fire (eg, blue water vs red fire, cool water vs hot fire). The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, which has 10 items for positive emotions (eg, attentive and excited) and 10 items for negative emotions (eg, scared and distressed), was administered after each of the two stages. In stage 3, the memory accuracy of the house fire video was assessed using a forced recognition test of 15 pairs of a true image and a fake image generated by artificial intelligence software.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

156

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Texas
      • Lubbock, Texas, United States, 79409
        • Industrial, Manufacturing, & Systems Engineering Department

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • aged at least 18 years
  • currently enrolled at the university

Exclusion Criteria:

  • under 18 years
  • not currently enrolled at the university

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Intervention Group
Intervention Group participants watched semantically irrelevant VR video of the Red Sea underwater diving 5 minutes after participants watched the fire video.
Other: Watching VR video
Participants watch 360-degree VR video of underwater diving 5 minutes after they watched the fire video.
No Intervention: Control
Control group participants did not receive any intervention.
Placebo Comparator: Comparison Group
Comparison Group participants read text description of the Red Sea underwater diving 5 minutes after participants watched the fire video.
Other: Reading text
Participants read text paragraphs regarding underwater diving 5 minutes after they watched the fire video.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Memory accuracy
Time Frame: Immediately after participants received the intervention.
The ratio of correct images participants chose from two images of the fire video they watched.
Immediately after participants received the intervention.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Positive And Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)
Time Frame: Immediately after participants watched the fire video and immediately after they watched the VR video (intervention) or read the text (comparison).
PANAS consists of 10 positive affects and 10 negative affects each with a 5-point Likert scale.
Immediately after participants watched the fire video and immediately after they watched the VR video (intervention) or read the text (comparison).

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Texas Tech University

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Changwon Son, PhD, Texas Tech University

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

  • Son, C., Parker, K., & Jamshidzadeh, M. (2026). Effects of a Semantically Irrelevant Virtual Reality Experience on Memory and Emotion After Watching a Traumatic Event: Randomized Controlled Experimental Study. JMIR Formative Research

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

June 27, 2023

Primary Completion (Actual)

September 8, 2023

Study Completion (Actual)

September 8, 2023

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

January 9, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 30, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

February 6, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 6, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 30, 2026

Last Verified

January 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2022-966

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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