Abstract Adolescents with conduct disorder (CD) often exhibit deficits in emotion recognition, strained parent and peer relationships, and elevated social stress. This randomized controlled trial tested Impact VR, a brief, immersive socioemotional intervention, with the aim of building protective factors and improving socioemotional functioning among youth with CD. A total of 110 adolescents with CD ( M age = 13.79; 58% male) were randomized to either the Impact VR intervention or an active control. Outcomes were assessed at baseline, post-intervention, and 3-month follow-up, including emotion recognition accuracy (ER40 total and subscales: fear, sadness, anger, happy, neutral), self-reported peer relationships, parent relationships, and social stress. Mixed-effects models controlled for baseline scores. Impact VR produced significant improvements in ER40 total accuracy ( d = 0.74, p < .001), with specific gains for fear ( d = 0.54, p < .001), sadness ( d = 0.75, p < .001), and anger ( d = 0.50, p = .014). No group differences emerged for happy ( p = .126) or neutral ( p = .050). Impact VR participants also reported stronger peer relationships ( d = 0.58, p = .002) and parental relationships ( d = 0.54, p < .001), and reductions in social stress at the 3-month follow-up ( d = 0.53, p < .001). Findings demonstrate that even brief, scalable interventions delivered through immersive virtual experiences can yield meaningful improvements in socioemotional functioning for adolescents with CD. Impact VR represents a promising, engaging, and developmentally sensitive addition to the prevention science toolbox.
Thomson et al. (Thu,) studied this question.