ABSTRACT
Sex crimes and aggravated assaults are some of the most difficult cases to be tried in court, especially for the victims that need to take the witness stand in the presence of the accused, the judge and other participants of the proceedings. Victims are already strained by the nature of their situation, and the additional burden of needing to face their alleged perpetrator again under unfamiliar circumstances and become the focus of everyone's attention, can become overwhelming and cause severe anxiety. Today, courtrooms are sketched on paper to prepare the victims, e.g. by showing them a seating arrangement, but the effectiveness of this method has been questioned. Therefore, an ongoing pilot project, in close collaboration with the police, the court system and psychologists working with young victims of sexual assault, is exploring the use of an interactive court proceedings simulation in VR. The simulation involves a recreation of the exact location of the planned proceedings, as well as some of the social factors, using virtual humans. This extended abstract describes work in progress, focusing on the motivation for doing this, why this might be an effective approach, and a working prototype.
- Page L. Anderson, Matthew Price, Shannan M. Edwards, Mayowa A. Obasaju, Stefan K. Schmertz, Elana Zimand, and Martha R. Calamaras. 2013. Virtual reality exposure therapy for social anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 81, 5 (Oct. 2013), 751--760.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Page L. Anderson, Barbara O. Rothbaum, and Larry Hodges. 2001. Virtual reality: Using the virtual world to improve quality of life in the real world. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic; New York, Vol. 65, 1: Special issue (March 2001), 78--91. https://doi.org/abs101521bumc6517818713Google Scholar
- Eola Barnett and Lindy McKeown. 2012. The student behind the avatar: using Second Life (virtual world) for legal advocacy skills development and assessment for external students: a critical evaluation. Journal of Commonwealth Law and Legal Education, Vol. 8 (2012), 41--63.Google Scholar
- Merijn Bruijnes, Rieks op den Akker, Arno Hartholt, and Dirk Heylen. 2015. Virtual Suspect William. In International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents. Springer, 67--76.Google Scholar
- Tanvir Irfan Chowdhury, Sharif Mohammad Shahnewaz Ferdous, and John Quarles. 2017. Information recall in a virtual reality disability simulation. In Proc. of the 23rd ACM Symp. on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. ACM, 37. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dominique J.-F. de Quervain, Benno Roozendaal, Roger M. Nitsch, James L. McGaugh, and Christoph Hock. 2000. Acute cortisone administration impairs retrieval of long-term declarative memory in humans. Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 3, 4 (April 2000), 313--314.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Carol A Kilmon, Leonard Brown, Sumit Ghosh, and Artur Mikitiuk. 2010. Immersive virtual reality simulations in nursing education. Nursing education perspectives, Vol. 31, 5 (2010), 314--317.Google Scholar
- S Kuhlmann, C Kirschbaum, and O Wolf. 2005 a. Effects of oral cortisol treatment in healthy young women on memory retrieval of negative and neutral words. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Vol. 83, 2 (March 2005), 158--162.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Sabrina Kuhlmann, Marcel Piel, and Oliver T. Wolf. 2005 b. Impaired memory retrieval after psychosocial stress in healthy young men. Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 25, 11 (March 2005), 2977--2982.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Fredric I Lederer. 1999. The road to the virtual courtroom? A consideration of today's -- and tomorrow's -- high technology courtrooms. SOUTH CAROLINA LAW REVIEW (1999), 47.Google Scholar
- Changyang Li, Wei Liang, Chris Quigley, Yibiao Zhao, and Lap-Fai Yu. 2017. Earthquake safety training through virtual drills. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, Vol. 23, 4 (2017), 1275--1284. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Fabrizia Mantovani, Gianluca Castelnuovo, Andrea Gaggioli, and Giuseppe Riva. 2003. Virtual reality training for health-care professionals. CyberPsychology & Behavior, Vol. 6, 4 (2003), 389--395.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Patricia A. Resick. 1984. The trauma of rape and the criminal justice system. The Justice System Journal, Vol. 9, 1 (1984), 52--61. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20877729Google Scholar
- Barbara Olasov Rothbaum, Larry Hodges, Renato Alarcon, David Ready, Fran Shahar, Ken Graap, Jarrel Pair, Philip Hebert, Dave Gotz, Brian Wills, and David Baltzell. 1999. Virtual reality exposure therapy for PTSD Vietnam veterans: A case study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 12, 2 (1999), 263--271.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Barbara Olasov Rothbaum, Larry Hodges, Samantha Smith, Jeong Hwan Lee, and Larry Price. 2000. A controlled study of virtual reality exposure therapy for the fear of flying. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 68, 6 (2000), 1020--1026.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Barbara Olasov Rothbaum, Larry F. Hodges, Rob Kooper, Dan Opdyke, James S. Williford, and Max North. 1995. Virtual reality graded exposure in the treatment of acrophobia: A case report. Behavior Therapy, Vol. 26, 3 (1995), 547--554.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Erasmus University Rotterdam. 2019. Virtual Reality Courtroom: bringing the courtroom to you. https://www.eur.nl/en/news/virtual-reality-courtroom-bringing-courtroom-youGoogle Scholar
- Irwin G. Sarason. 1984. Stress, anxiety, and cognitive interference: Reactions to tests. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 46, 4 (April 1984), 929--938.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Sarah Sharples, Gary Burnett, and Sue Cobb. 2014. Sickness in Virtual Reality. In Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders. Springer, 35--62.Google Scholar
- Till Sieberth, Akos Dobay, Raffael Affolter, and Lars C. Ebert. 2019. Applying virtual reality in forensics -- a virtual scene walkthrough. Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology, Vol. 15, 1 (March 2019), 41--47.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Judith M. Siegel and Elizabeth F. Loftus. 1978. Impact of anxiety and life stress upon eyewitness testimony. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, Vol. 12, 6 (Dec. 1978), 479--480.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Tom Smeets, Henry Otgaar, Ingrid Candel, and Oliver T. Wolf. 2008. True or false? Memory is differentially affected by stress-induced cortisol elevations and sympathetic activity at consolidation and retrieval. Psychoneuroendocrinology, Vol. 33, 10 (Nov. 2008), 1378--1386.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Sharon Stansfield, Daniel Shawver, Annette Sobel, Monica Prasad, and Lydia Tapia. 2000. Design and implementation of a virtual reality system and its application to training medical first responders. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, Vol. 9, 6 (2000), 524--556. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jennifer Tichon. 2007. Training cognitive skills in virtual reality: Measuring performance. CyberPsychology & Behavior, Vol. 10, 2 (April 2007), 286--289.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Oliver T. Wolf. 2009. Stress and memory in humans: Twelve years of progress? Brain Research, Vol. 1293 (Oct. 2009), 142--154.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- Work in Progress Report: Virtual Courtroom to Prepare Victims of Sex Crimes for Court Proceedings
Recommendations
Children’s perception of phobogenic stimuli in virtual reality
Abstract Background:There has been a growing interest in treatments involving exposure in virtual reality (VR) for a number of anxiety disorders and phobias. Contrary to expectations, this technique has proven less popular with ...
Highlights- Virtual reality to treat phobias is not always attracting for children.
- ...
Developing a virtual reality environment for educational and therapeutic application to investigate psychological reactivity to bullying
AbstractUnderstanding how bullying victimisation influences cognitive and emotional processes may help to direct early intervention to prevent the development of psychopathology. In a convenience sample of 67 female adolescents, we assessed the potential ...
Choreografish: Co-designing a Choreography-based Therapeutic Virtual Reality System with Youth Who Have Autism Spectrum Advantages
CHI PLAY '18 Extended Abstracts: Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended AbstractsChoreografish is a virtual reality, therapeutic arts engagement leveraging participatory research and design to collaborate with young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The research team was motivated by the social anxiety some with ASD have, ...
Comments