Let’s dive into it! exploring mentalizing abilities in adolescence in an immersive 360° environment

Adolescence is a crucial developmental phase encompassing sometimes rapid changes in the psychological processes concerning the quality of interpersonal relationships, i.e., social cognition (SC). Mentalization is a form of SC that describes the ability to understand behaviors in terms of underlying mental states such as thoughts, emotions, and motivations (theory of mind, ToM). However, mentalization assessment showed mixed findings and highlighted the need for valid ecological measures to capture the complexity of adolescents' subjective experience of "making sense" of interpersonal relationships. Assessment with 360° videos enables an engaging and immersive environment fostering a first-person and realistic experience. This contribution's main objective is to suggest the development of a new tool for assessing mentalizing abilities (MA) in adolescence through an immersive technology-based approach. Subjects participate in 25/30 minutes evaluations using a new technological app to assess MA via a head-tracked Head Mounted Display (HMD). Each subject is inside a virtual apartment and observes the interaction between some characters. The subject must try to evaluate their thoughts, emotions, and motivations. The HMD device will assess the participants' ability to make inferential thoughts about others' states of mind and a validated device will record Heart Rate Variability as a measure of emotion regulation. This protocol allows thoroughly evaluating MA in an ecological and valid environment via an innovative technology-based approach, providing useful insights on the individuals’ specific abilities/deficiencies. This innovative and engaging tool will provide reliable information for clinical use and research about adolescents, often adverse to psychological assessment.