Chapter 4 88 officers in high-threat conditions (see for instance, Bélanger & Blanchette, 2022, perceived induced stress = 46; Nieuwenhuys et al., 2015, perceived stress in high threat condition = 65) the elicited levels of perceived stress were relatively high in our study even without the pain stimulus (VR = 62). This supports the notion that perceived stress was already at a level at which a pain stimulus may not have added anything further. One reason for this difference in perceived stress between VR and VirTra may be due to the different training configurations. In VR, police officers performed in groups of four using rifles, which is done when police officers respond to high-threat operational situations. Comparatively, in the VirTra training, police officers use their own service weapons and performed in pairs, which is similar to their on-duty experience. Thus, it may be possible that the set-up of the VR training induced higher levels of perceived stress while in VirTra the familiarity with the training context contributed to lower levels of perceived stress. Moreover, the addition of a pain stimulus did not influence any of the physical training responses assessed in our study. (Nieuwenhuys & Oudejans, 2011) demonstrated that, in a real-life setting, a threatening opponent who shot back at officers with colored-soap cartridges provoked higher heart rates, and higher anxiety and mental effort scores compared to an opponent who does not shoot back. Therefore, we anticipated to see heightened physical responses in response to a pain stimulus in virtual training as well. Similar to the explanation for psychological training responses, it may be that due to the already high training load (particularly in VR), we observe a potential ceiling effect. Another possible explanation may be that the pain stimulus was seldomly used in VR (8% of participants in the pain stimulus condition received a pain stimulus in response to getting hit by an opponent) compared to the frequent use in VirTra (64% of participants in the pain stimulus condition received a pain stimulus in response to getting hit by an opponent). Note however that the presence of a physical threat alone (with just an occasional pain stimulus, just as in VR in the current study) has been found to elicit higher levels of stress and anxiety in police officers in earlier studies (Nieuwenhuys et al., 2012; Nieuwenhuys & Oudejans, 2010). To conclude, hypothesis 1 is not fully supported by our data— the addition of pain stimulus to virtual training simulators influenced the training responses only minimally. Only in VirTra did the addition of a pain stimulus heighten the perceived stress during the training. Addressing the second hypothesis, we found that sense of presence measures seemed to be unaffected by the addition of a pain stimulus. Particularly regarding ecological validity (one of the four sense of presence factors assessed in our study) we hypothesised that the addition of a pain stimulus would increase the perception of the naturalness of the virtual environment. However, our findings showed that neither in VR (low-frequency use of the pain stimulus) nor in VirTra (high-frequency use of the pain stimulus) the spatial presence, engagement, or ecological
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