Autistic adolescents completed visual perspective-taking and false-belief tasks in VR using either everyday objects or objects tied to their own special interests. Accuracy on false-belief reasoning dropped significantly when special-interest stimuli were used, while perspective-taking accuracy and response times were unaffected, suggesting personally salient content can narrow attention away from mentalising about others.

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2026

We built an open-access VR drumming app to study interpersonal synchrony and tested it across two experiments. Drumming in sync with a matched virtual partner increased feelings of affiliation, and when Caucasian participants drummed in sync with Middle Eastern avatars, it also increased trust and reduced prejudicial attitudes toward Middle Eastern refugees, though synchrony alone did not change pro-social behaviour in an economic game.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2025

Two hundred participants from the UK and Malaysia took part in three experiments manipulating enemy gender, sexually explicit attire, and character agency in video games. Exposure to gender-stereotyped content showed little consistent effect on implicit associations, sexism, or rape myth acceptance, though playing against male enemies in a first-person shooter was linked to lower endorsement of some sexist attitudes and different in-game behaviour compared to female enemies.

New Media & Society, 2022