No Pain, No Gain? The Effects of Adding a Pain Stimulus in Virtual Training for Police Officers 4 73 INTRODUCTION Training technologies, such as virtual training simulators, are becoming increasingly popular in police agencies (Arble & Arnetz, 2021). Virtual training simulators allow police agencies new opportunities to advance their training. Using a virtual training simulator, complex and highrisk scenarios can be trained in a safe and controllable environment. Vulnerable populations (such as children, the elderly, mentally ill people) that cannot easily be included in real-life training can be simulated in virtual environments (Kent & Hughes, 2022; Murtinger et al., 2021). Scenario locations and content can be designed and adjusted almost at will (Giessing, 2021). The increased safety and flexibility of using virtual simulators in training makes these technologies particularly interesting for police agencies. A variety of virtual training simulators exist, from basic 2D screen, video-based simulators, to interactive 2D screen simulators, to advanced, interactive virtual reality (VR) systems (de Armas et al., 2020). Even in their most basic form, virtual simulators have been shown to effectively induce realistic responses. For instance, by projecting pre-recorded scenarios onto a wall using a laptop and projector, Groer et al. (2010) demonstrated that virtual simulators elicit acute psychophysiological stress responses in police officers. Moreover, interactive VR systems have been used to train advanced skills, such as firearm shooting in the military (Bhagat et al., 2016), laparoscopic surgery in medicine (Alaker et al., 2016), or table tennis skills in racquet sports (Michalski et al., 2019). Thus, virtual training simulators seem able to elicit similar psychophysiological responses as real-life training does and support the development of advanced (motor) skills. These two effects of virtual training simulators, eliciting psychophysiological responses and supporting skill development, are promising and desirable for police training, particularly in the context of realistic training. Virtual simulators offer benefits, such as flexibility and safety in training; however, there are also limitation to the application of these technologies. Because the training simulations take place in a virtual environment, the interaction with that environment offers limited multisensory experiences (Giessing, 2021). Even in advanced interactive VR systems, the interaction with the virtual environment is generally limited to audiovisual stimuli (Melo et al., 2020). Steps are being taken to include further sensory feedback, such as tactile stimuli (for instance, using a weapon or other equipment in the virtual environment or receiving haptic feedback from virtual obstacles) and olfactory stimuli (for instance, implementing smells, such as gasoline). Despite advancements in multisensory integration in virtual simulators (e.g. Marucci et al., 2021), there are theoretical and practical limitations that make it difficult to simulate sensory experiences in a virtual environment; for instance, the simulation of localised smells that only occur in a specific area of the virtual environment or the realistic interaction with simulated objects through haptic force feedback (Gallace et al., 2012; Scarfe & Glennerster, 2019).
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