Children's aggressive behaviour is partly determined by how they process social information (e.g., making hostile interpretations or aiming to seek revenge). Such aggressive social information processing (SIP) may be most evident if children are emotionally engaged in actual social interactions. Current methods to assess aggressive SIP, however, often ask children to reflect on hypothetical vignettes. This pilot study therefore examined a new method that actually involves children in emotionally engaging social interactions: interactive virtual reality (VR). We developed a virtual classroom where children could play games with virtual peers. A sample of boys (N = 32; ages 8–13) from regular and special education reported on their SIP in distinct VR contexts (i.e., neutral, instrumental gain and provocation). They also completed a standard vignette-based assessment of SIP. Results demonstrated good convergent validity of interactive VR assessment of SIP, as indicated by significant moderate to large correlations of VR-assessed SIP with vignette-assessed SIP for all SIP variables except anger. Interactive VR showed improved measurement sensitivity (i.e., larger variances in SIP compared to vignettes) for aggressive responding, but not for other SIP variables. Discriminant validity (i.e., distinct SIP patterns across contexts) of interactive VR was supported for provocation contexts, but not for instrumental gain contexts. Last, children were more enthusiastic about the VR assessment compared to the vignette-based assessment. These findings suggest that interactive VR may be a promising tool, allowing for the assessment of children's aggressive SIP in standardized yet emotionally engaging social interactions.

中文翻译：

---

对有行为问题的男孩的攻击性社会信息处理的交互式虚拟现实评估：一项试点研究

儿童的攻击性行为部分取决于他们处理社会信息的方式（例如，做出敌对的解释或旨在寻求报复）。如果孩子在情感上参与实际的社交互动，这种积极的社交信息处理（SIP）可能最为明显。然而，目前评估攻击性 SIP 的方法经常要求儿童反思假设的小插曲。因此，这项试点研究检验了一种实际上让儿童参与情感社交互动的新方法：交互式虚拟现实（VR）。我们开发了一个虚拟教室，孩子们可以与虚拟同伴一起玩游戏。 来自普通教育和特殊教育的男孩样本（N = 32；年龄 8-13）报告了他们在不同 VR 环境（即中立、工具性增益和挑衅）下的 SIP。他们还完成了基于标准小插图的 SIP 评估。结果表明，SIP 的交互式 VR 评估具有良好的收敛效度，对于除愤怒之外的所有 SIP 变量，VR 评估的 SIP 与小插图评估的 SIP 均存在显着的中等到大相关性。交互式 VR 显示出对于积极响应的测量灵敏度有所提高（即，与小插图相比，SIP 的差异更大），但对于其他 SIP 变量则不然。交互式 VR 的判别有效性（即跨上下文的不同 SIP 模式）支持挑衅上下文，但不支持工具增益上下文。最后，与基于小插图的评估相比，孩子们对 VR 评估更感兴趣。这些发现表明，交互式 VR 可能是一种很有前途的工具，可以在标准化但情感参与的社交互动中评估儿童的攻击性 SIP。