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REPORT DATE ^DD-MM-WYVj
07/29/2015
REPORTTYPE
FINAL TECHNICAL REPORT
TITLE AND SUBTITLEThe STRIVE-ONR Project: Stress Resistance in Virtual Environments
AUTHOR(S)Buckwalter, J. Galen
PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES)University of Southern California 3720 S. Flower Street Los Angeles, CA 90007-0701
SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES)Office
SPONSOR/MONITOR'S ACRONYM(S)
ONR
SPONSOR/MONITOR'S REPORT NUMBER(S)
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES
ABSTRACT ~STRIVE is a story-driven approach to using virtual reality (VR) for understanding and training psychological resilience in service members prior to a combat deployment. This effort is based on two scientific principles: 1) pre-exposure to traumatic events within a safe environment provides some degree of protection for those later exposed to subsequent trauma and 2) resilience, or the rate and effectiveness with which someone returns to normal after stress, can be strengthened through systematic training. This project created the fifth episode (of six) of STRIVE and also resulted in four papers. Interaction by SMs within such emotionally challenging scenarios aims to provide a more meaningful context in which to learn and practice psychoeducational and cognitive coping strategies that research suggests plays a supportive role in the psychological preparation for a combat deployment. To accomplish this, STRIVE has been designed as a multi-episode interactive narrative in VR, akin to being immersed within a "Band of Brothers" type storyline that spans a typical deployment cycle. We currently have an initial story arc of six episodes created that will be used in the research that is now being proposed. At the end of each of the graded 10-minute episodes, an emotionally challenging event occurs, designed in part from feedback provided by SMs undergoing PTSD VRET (e.g., seeing/handling human remains, direct threat to safety via an IED attack in a vehicle, moral challenges due to culturally relativistic events (wife beating), the death of a civilian child, death of a squad member, grief processing in theatre). At that point in the episode, the virtual worl...