CyberPsychology & Behavior

Edited by:
  • Mark D. Wiederhold
Mary Ann Liebert. 6/yr. USA $143, elsewhere $182 (institutional); USA $79, elsewhere $119 (personal)
Credit: DAVID NEWTON

Separating the interesting issues related to the impact of the Internet, multimedia and virtual reality (VR) from their respective media hype is never going to be easy. Like these products of the global information age, scientific research into their effects on behaviour and society is likely to be both prolific and of a very variable quality. The challenge for a journal devoted to this area, then, is likely to be one of selection.

The range of articles in CyberPsychology & Behavior (C&B) is wide. The journal is primarily aimed at healthcare providers who are interested in the use of advanced technology to reduce the cost of healthcare. Consequently, many articles discuss advances in virtual reality that allow its application in a mental health setting. For example, patients with acquired brain injuries, neurological disorders and developmental disabilities may benefit from VR training in a range of simulated environments. VR also has exciting possibilities in psychotherapy. Phobias may be treated with more precision in a virtual environment which can be switched off when necessary: recently published C&B articles show that fear of flying is one area in which progress is being made. The benefits of VR in treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder have also been recently discussed.

On the other hand, evidence of the Internet's value in psychotherapy is less convincing, and articles presenting research into the Internet's impact on behaviour tend to rely on opportunity sampling and number crunching to reach their conclusions. These papers take a very different approach from the patient studies discussed above, which makes for an uneasy balance in the journal. CyberPsychology & Behavior provides a forum for a range of topics that may turn out to be too wide for comfort.