Contribution of Virtual Reality to the Reproduction of Social Interaction Characteristics in Neuropsychology: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Sociocognitive difficulties are observed in many pathologies associated with brain lesions or atypical brain functioning. The development of virtual reality offers an opportunity to assess this dimension from an interactionist perspective and to increase the ecological validity of the material used. However, this approach can be operationalized and conceptualized in a variety of ways. To understand these aspects, we conducted a systematic review of articles found in the PubMed, PubMed Central, and ScienceDirect databases, following PRISMA-P guidelines. A corpus of 48 articles was identified and analyzed in terms of the experimental devices used, to gauge the extent to which they reproduced the characteristics of real-world social interactions, as well as the associated conceptions. Results suggested that interactionist research lies on a continuum between ecological validity (studies exploring interactions via general functions) and a high level of experimental control (exploration of interactions with respect to specific processes). They are discussed in terms of the operationalization and objectification of interactionism.