Virtual accident curb risk habituation in workers by restoring sensory responses to real-world warning

Namgyun Kim; Laurent Grégoire; Moein Razavi; Niya Yan; Changbum R Ahn; Brian A Anderson

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105827

Virtual accident curb risk habituation in workers by restoring sensory responses to real-world warning

iScience. 2022 Dec 17;26(1):105827. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105827. eCollection 2023 Jan 20.

Authors

Namgyun Kim¹, Laurent Grégoire², Moein Razavi³, Niya Yan², Changbum R Ahn⁴, Brian A Anderson²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, USA.
² Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
³ Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
⁴ Department of Architecture and Architectural Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.

Abstract

In high-risk work environments, workers become habituated to hazards they frequently encounter, subsequently underestimating risk and engaging in unsafe behaviors. This phenomenon has been termed "risk habituation" and identified as a vital root cause of fatalities and injuries at workplaces. Providing an effective intervention that curbs workers' risk habituation is critical in preventing occupational injuries and fatalities. However, there exists no empirically supported intervention for curbing risk habituation. To this end, here we investigated how experiencing an accident in a virtual reality (VR) environment affects workers' risk habituation toward repeatedly exposed workplace hazards. We examined an underlying mechanism of risk habituation at the sensory level and evaluated the effect of the accident intervention through electroencephalography (EEG). The results of pre- and posttreatment analyses indicate experiencing the virtual accident effectively curbs risk habituation at both the behavioral and sensory level. The findings open new vistas for occupational safety training.

Keywords: Behavioral neuroscience; Cognitive neuroscience; Techniques in neuroscience.