Music Performance in an Immersive Environment

This proof-of-concept study was designed to address two elements: first, to investigate the affordances of a VR environment to trigger the physiological fight-flight response that accompanies MPA; and secondly, to assess the effectiveness of a digitally mediated environment for tertiary educators to train a key performance psychology skill (a centering pre-performance routine) online.

These figures capture two of the study authors - a psychologist and a musician - working together in separate locations over Zoom and VR.  During the session the psychologist guided the participant remotely through the routine via Zoom, whilst the participant was immersed in the VR environment. Heart rate, subjective units of distress, and confidence measurements were taken across levels of exposure which varied the integration of instrument and centering intervention.