irtual Reality 


| RICHARD LAMB, PHD, ELISABETH ETOPIO, PHD, & REBEKAH E. LAMB, MA


V


irtual reality (VR) has potential as a method for engaging in meaningful play therapy. Therapists in a variety of contexts use multiple types of activities to advance sessions with their child patients. Despite the wide availability of electronic games, virtual reality, and children’s near ubiquitous use of these technologies


in their free time, there is limited adoption of these technologies in play therapy. As with any game, video games and virtual reality provide means of teaching interactions, developing problem solving, and discussing questions of sportsmanship, fairness, cooperation, rivalry, and the nature of winning and losing. More importantly, VR translates to the essential components of play: (a) the child has the capacity to make his or her own decisions; (b) the child experiences full immersion in the moment; (c) the activity in the VR environment is intrinsically motivating; and (d) the play is enjoyable, spontaneous, and not scripted.


22 | PLAYTHERAPY | March 2018 | www.a4pt.org


Recently, VR applications have received considerable research and popular attention. VR has shown some promise in cognitive retraining (Lock, 2015), exposure therapy (Miloff et al., 2016), and play therapy (Mumford, 2016).


Since the early millennium, researchers and


clinicians have placed increasing attention on therapy modalities  increase the functional aspects of VR for therapeutic use. Early VR play therapy started with serious games, in which the player engages in a series of complex interactions in a game play setting. This ultimately morphed into therapeutic virtual reality as it is being developed now (Annetta, 2010; Lamb, Annetta, Vallett, & Sadler, 2014). In this context, VR is understood as the use of three-dimensional graphic systems in combination with various interactive interfaces to provide the effect of immersion and interaction in a 360-degree environment (Ihemedu- Steinke, Erbach, Halady, Meixner, & Weber, 2017).


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