Intervention GroupFIRMNCT07393776
Effects of Semantically Irrelevant Virtual Reality Experience on Memory and Emotion
A study testing Watching VR video and Reading text in people with Intervention Group and Comparison Group, run by Texas Tech University at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
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. Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 18 years and olderHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- Intervention Group, Comparison Group, Control Group
- What is being tested?
- Watching VR video and Reading text
- Could I receive a placebo?
- Yes, some participants may receive a placebo
- How many people
- 156 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- 27 Jun 2023to 8 Sep 2023
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- None posted in the registry
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 18 years and older
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Adult, Older adult
Who may be able to join
- aged at least 18 years
- currently enrolled at the university
Who cannot join
- under 18 years
- not currently enrolled at the university
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country.
United States1 site
Industrial, Manufacturing, & Systems Engineering Department
Lubbock, Texas, 79409
About this study
Official title: 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).
Read the 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.
- Conditions
- Intervention Group, Comparison Group, Control Group
- Being tested
- Watching VR video, Reading text
- Keywords
- virtual reality, mental health, memory suppression, emotion
- Medical subject headings
- Psychological Well-Being
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Watching VR videoOther
Participants watch 360-degree VR video of underwater diving 5 minutes after they watched the fire video.
Reading textOther
Participants read text paragraphs regarding underwater diving 5 minutes after they watched the fire video.
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Intervention Group | Active comparator | Intervention Group participants watched semantically irrelevant VR video of the Red Sea underwater diving 5 minutes after participants watched the fire video. Receives: Other: Watching VR video |
| Control | No intervention | Control group participants did not receive any intervention. |
| Comparison Group | Placebo comparator | Comparison Group participants read text description of the Red Sea underwater diving 5 minutes after participants watched the fire video. Receives: Other: Reading text |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Memory accuracy
The ratio of correct images participants chose from two images of the fire video they watched.
Measured: Immediately after participants received the intervention.
Secondary outcomes (1)
Positive And Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)
PANAS consists of 10 positive affects and 10 negative affects each with a 5-point Likert scale.
Measured: Immediately after participants watched the fire video and immediately after they watched the VR video (intervention) or read the text (comparison).
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted6 Feb 2026
- Study start27 Jun 2023
- Primary completion8 Sep 2023
- Study completion8 Sep 2023
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Publications (1)Papers the sponsor has linked to this study.
- Other trials for Intervention GroupStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Model description
- 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).
- Masking
- Single blind
- Who is masked
- Participant
- Enrolment
- 156 participants (actual)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- Texas Tech University
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Responsible party
- Sponsor
- Investigators
- Changwon Son, PhD, Principal investigator, Texas Tech University
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT07393776
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- 2022-966
- Acronym
- FIRM
- Status last verified
- Jan 2026
- First submitted
- 9 Jan 2026
- Last updated
- 6 Feb 2026
- Results posted
- No
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- No
Publications
Son C, Parker K, Jamshidzadeh M. Effects of a Semantically Irrelevant Virtual Reality Experience on Memory and Emotion After Watching a Traumatic Event: Randomized Controlled Experimental Study. JMIR Form Res. 2026 Feb 26;10:e75848. doi: 10.2196/75848.
PubMed 41747253
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 6 Feb 2026. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Effects of a Semantically Irrelevant Virtual Reality Experience on Memory and Emotion After Watching a Traumatic Event: Randomized Controlled Experimental Study
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT07393776
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- FIRM / 2022-966
- Conditions
- Intervention Group, Comparison Group, Control Group
- Keywords
- virtual reality, mental health, memory suppression, emotion
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Enrolment
- 156 participants (actual)
- Lead sponsor
- Texas Tech UniversityUniversity, hospital or other
- Study start
- 27 Jun 2023 (actual)
- Primary completion
- 8 Sep 2023 (actual)
- Study completion
- 8 Sep 2023 (actual)
- First posted
- 6 Feb 2026 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
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).
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 design
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- Single blind (participant)
- Number of arms
- 3
- Model description
- 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).
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Intervention Group | Active comparator | Other: Watching VR videoIntervention Group participants watched semantically irrelevant VR video of the Red Sea underwater diving 5 minutes after participants watched the fire video. |
| Control | No intervention | –Control group participants did not receive any intervention. |
| Comparison Group | Placebo comparator | Other: Reading textComparison Group participants read text description of the Red Sea underwater diving 5 minutes after participants watched the fire video. |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 18 years and older
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Age groups
- Adult, Older adult
Key inclusion criteria (2 listed)
- aged at least 18 years
- currently enrolled at the university
Key exclusion criteria (2 listed)
- under 18 years
- not currently enrolled at the university
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Watching VR videoParticipants watch 360-degree VR video of underwater diving 5 minutes after they watched the fire video. | Other | Intervention Group |
| Reading textParticipants read text paragraphs regarding underwater diving 5 minutes after they watched the fire video. | Other | Comparison Group |
Primary outcome
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.
1 secondary outcome
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).
Results and safety
The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 6 Feb 2026.
- Results publication: PubMed 41747253Son C, Parker K, Jamshidzadeh M. Effects of a Semantically Irrelevant Virtual Reality Experience on Memory and Emotion After Watching a Traumatic Event: Randomized Controlled Experimental Study. JMIR Form Res. 2026 Feb 26;10:e75848. doi: 10.2196/75848.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: No
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part. This study is not recruiting at the moment.
Changwon Son, PhD principal investigator
Texas Tech University
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing Watching VR video and Reading text in people with Intervention Group and Comparison Group, run by Texas Tech University at 1 site in United States.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 2 inclusion and 2 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 6 Feb 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. Some participants in this study may receive a placebo. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Memory accuracy (time frame: Immediately after participants received the intervention.). It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT07393776, which also lists 1 linked publication.
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 6 Feb 2026.