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Development and Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Puzzle Game to Decrease Food Intake: Randomized Controlled Trial
Yunxin Liu1, Angelos Stamos2, Siegfried Dewitte3
1Department of Marketing and Retailing, ESSCA School of Management, Lyon, France.
JMIR Serious Games
|February 3, 2022
Summary
Virtual reality (VR) food cues may increase food intake overall, but for women, exposure to these cues, in VR or real life, reduces subsequent food consumption. This suggests VR interventions may be effective for women.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral Science
- Psychology
- Human-Computer Interaction
Background:
- Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in daily life.
- VR food cues can trigger cravings, similar to real food.
- The effect of VR food cues on actual food intake is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if the real-life (RL) pre-exposure effect, where exposure to food cues reduces subsequent intake, can be replicated in RL.
- To investigate if this pre-exposure effect extends to virtual reality (VR) contexts.
- To explore the impact of VR food cues on food intake.
Main Methods:
- A between-subject design with 175 participants was used.
- Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: food or nonfood cues in either VR or RL.
- The study examined the effect of stimulus type (food vs. nonfood) and mode (VR vs. RL) on food intake.
Main Results:
- Overall, participants in VR conditions consumed more food than those in RL conditions (P=.02).
- Among female participants, exposure to food cues (VR or RL) led to lower food intake compared to nonfood cues (P=.05).
- This effect was not significant in male participants (P=.34), and VR/RL cues elicited similar emotional/behavioral responses.
Conclusions:
- The study could not replicate the pre-exposure effect in the overall sample.
- Subgroup analysis revealed that for women, exposure to food cues in both VR and RL reduced food intake.
- A VR pre-exposure procedure may be a viable strategy for managing food intake specifically in women.
