A Virtual Reality Prototype as a Tool Against Verbal Abuse in Classrooms: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Abstract

The exploration of affective response and its vegetative correlate to verbal abuse (VA) is a relevant research area to prevent bullying at schools. Taking advantage of the possibilities that virtual reality offers regarding to immersion in non-real environments inducing feelings in the users, this paper presents a virtual reality application focused on the study of VA in a school context. The versatility of the proposed project is directly related to its applicability. It has been designed under the premises of the psycho-neural effect of VA. The tool is intended to be used under professional and parental supervision, to perform experiments regarding bulling awareness. In this first stage, the authors propose a prototype that will be optimized and upgraded in future versions.