Alqudah Ashraf F, Hirsh Adam T, Stutts Lauren A, Scipio Cindy D, Robinson Michael E
University of Jordan, Department of Psychology, Amman, Jordan.
J Cyber Ther Rehabil. 2010;3(1):63-70.
This study examined the influence of Virtual Humans' (VH) sex and race on participants' ratings of pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, pain-related negative mood, pain coping, and recommendations for medical help. Seventy-five undergraduates viewed a series of VHs and provided computerized visual analog scale (VAS) ratings for the five domains listed above. Mixed model ANOVA analyses showed that participants of both sexes and races viewed female VHs as experiencing greater pain intensity, greater pain unpleasantness, a greater number of pain-related negative moods, poorer coping skills, and a greater need to seek medical help for their pain. Participants of both races rated Caucasian VHs as experiencing more negative moods and poorer coping skills do deal with their pain. The novel computerized VH technology used herein allowed for the standardization of pain expression across sexes and races of VH stimuli, thus allowing us to remove the influence of biases when creating the study stimuli. This is a notable advantage over other research methodologies in this line of inquiry. Several future research and education applications of this VH technology are discussed.
本研究考察了虚拟人（VH）的性别和种族对参与者在疼痛强度、疼痛不适感、疼痛相关负面情绪、疼痛应对以及医疗求助建议等方面评分的影响。75名本科生观看了一系列虚拟人，并针对上述五个领域提供了计算机化视觉模拟量表（VAS）评分。混合模型方差分析显示，无论性别和种族，参与者都认为女性虚拟人经历着更高的疼痛强度、更强的疼痛不适感、更多与疼痛相关的负面情绪、更差的应对技巧以及因疼痛而更有寻求医疗帮助的需求。两个种族的参与者都认为白人虚拟人在应对疼痛时经历更多负面情绪且应对技巧更差。本文所使用的新型计算机化虚拟人技术实现了虚拟人刺激在性别和种族上疼痛表达的标准化，从而使我们在创建研究刺激时能够消除偏差的影响。相较于该研究领域的其他研究方法，这是一个显著优势。本文还讨论了该虚拟人技术未来的一些研究和教育应用。
