Assessing Engagement during Rescue Operation Simulated in Virtual Reality: A Psychophysiological Study

The goal of this study was to investigate the patterns of engagement among professional firefighters during a rescue operation challenge simulated in a virtual reality (VR). The simulator offers a training that would otherwise be impossible or very difficult to arrange in the real world, here a mass-casualty incident. We measured engagement with cardiovascular reactivity as well as subjective perceptions of workload. We found that both a VR rescue challenge and a VR control condition lead to engagement evident in the decrease in parasympathetic activation from baseline (measured as high-frequency heart rate variability). However, the rescue operation leads to a stronger increase in sympathetic activity (shorter pre-ejection period and RZ-interval) than the control condition. Furthermore, the subjective workload ratings corroborate the results from the objective engagement indices. These results demonstrate that it is possible to create a virtual environment that elicits engagement among professional rescuers.