The research team, led by Ye Ni and Zhaolei Sun of Kangwon National University in South Korea, together with colleagues from Zunyi Normal University and Henan Normal University in China, surveyed 457 Chinese adolescents aged 10 to 18 who had completed a six-week music-based immersive technology experience. Using structural equation modeling, the researchers found that engagement with the immersive music experience was significantly and positively associated with adolescents’ perceived alleviation of anxiety symptoms. More intriguingly, the experience was also positively associated with the three psychological constructs, and each of these, in turn, was positively associated with perceived anxiety relief.

What makes this study particularly compelling is its mediation analysis. The researchers used a bootstrapping procedure with 1,000 resamples to test whether cognitive restructuring, self-acceptance, and self-efficacy statistically mediated the association between the immersive music experience and perceived anxiety alleviation. All three pathways were significant, with confidence intervals that excluded zero. In other words, adolescents who reported deeper engagement with the immersive music experience also tended to report greater capacity to reframe negative thoughts, more accepting attitudes toward themselves, and stronger beliefs in their ability to cope with challenges—and these psychological resources were statistically linked to their perceived relief from anxiety symptoms.

The immersive sessions themselves were carefully structured. Participants attended one 30-to-40-minute session per week for six consecutive weeks, delivered through PICO Neo 3 Pro standalone VR headsets with a stereoscopic 360-degree visual environment, a refresh rate of up to 90 Hz, and an approximate field of view of 98 degrees. Audio was delivered through over-ear headphones connected to the headset. The software environment, built in Unity, synchronized preselected 360-degree visual scenes—including natural landscapes, slow-moving abstract patterns, and interactive elements that responded to the music—with Chinese traditional music tracks and short guided verbal prompts.

Each session followed a standardized five-component structure: a brief orientation and comfort check, an opening breathing and attentional-settling segment, the main immersive music-and-visual experience lasting 20 to 25 minutes, short guided reflection prompts distributed across the session, and a closing transition period. The guided prompts were deliberately non-diagnostic and non-therapeutic in wording, designed to encourage calm attention, emotional awareness, and reflective appraisal. Examples included instructions to notice one’s breathing and let attention settle with the music, to observe worrying thoughts as they come and go, to look at one difficulty from another angle, and to accept the present moment without judging oneself.

A distinctive feature of the study was its use of culturally relevant Chinese music, including guqin, erhu, and bamboo flute. The research team grounded this choice in music cultural psychology, arguing that culturally congruent music may strengthen emotional engagement and cognitive receptivity. The pentatonic scale, slow tempo, and flowing melodies characteristic of traditional Chinese music are often associated with relaxation, attentional focus, and meditative states. Before the formal six-week program began, the team collected feedback from 32 adolescents comparable in age and school background to the main participants, who rated candidate music excerpts for perceived familiarity, emotional comfort, calmness, and suitability for an immersive experience. This feedback, combined with expert review by specialists in psychology, music therapy, and immersive technology, informed the final selection of musical materials.

The measurement instruments were adapted from established validated scales, with each core construct measured using three items rated on a five-point Likert scale. The research team subjected these items to a multi-step refinement process involving a panel of six expert reviewers—two researchers in adolescent psychology, one in psychometrics, one music therapy specialist, one immersive technology specialist, and one secondary-school mental health educator—who independently evaluated construct relevance, clarity, developmental appropriateness, cultural appropriateness, and contextual fit. Items were revised when at least two reviewers raised similar concerns. The final questionnaire was administered in Chinese following a rigorous translation and back-translation procedure, and internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha, with all scales demonstrating satisfactory reliability.

The statistical analysis was thorough. The research model demonstrated excellent fit indices, with a CMIN/DF of 1.526, a comparative fit index of 0.984, and a root mean square error of approximation of 0.033. All factor loadings exceeded 0.600, and the average variance extracted for each latent variable surpassed the accepted threshold of 0.5, indicating robust convergent validity. The discriminant validity was also adequate, as the square root of the average variance extracted for each construct exceeded the correlation coefficients among the latent variables. Harman’s single-factor test indicated that common method bias was not a significant concern, with the first unrotated factor explaining only 29.270 percent of the variance, well below the 50 percent threshold.

The direct path results revealed that the immersive music experience was significantly and positively associated with perceived anxiety alleviation, cognitive restructuring, self-acceptance, and self-efficacy. The standardized coefficients ranged from 0.125 for the direct association with perceived anxiety alleviation to 0.285 for the association with cognitive restructuring. The mediation pathways were also significant, with the self-efficacy pathway showing the largest confidence interval, suggesting that adolescents’ belief in their own coping abilities may be a particularly important psychological resource linking immersive music engagement to perceived anxiety relief.

The researchers are careful to note that this study was observational and cross-sectional, not an intervention trial. There was no control group, and all main study variables were collected at a single time point after the six-week experience. The dependent construct measured adolescents’ perceived alleviation of anxiety symptoms rather than clinical anxiety severity or objectively verified symptom change. The SCARED screening instrument was administered before the experience to characterize anxiety-related experiences in the sample, but it was not used to establish psychiatric diagnoses and was not included as the dependent variable in the structural equation model. The researchers explicitly state that the findings do not permit conclusions about therapeutic efficacy, symptom reduction, treatment effectiveness, temporal ordering, or causal mediation.

Despite these limitations, the theoretical implications are significant. The study extends existing research on music therapy and immersive technology by examining their integration within the context of adolescent mental health. Previous studies on music therapy have primarily focused on traditional auditory or clinical settings, while immersive technology has often been applied in educational or simulation-based contexts. By examining the immersive music experience as a culturally and technologically enriched experience, this research broadens the theoretical discussion on how multisensory music-based experiences may be associated with adolescents’ perceived emotional and psychological states. The findings also contribute to existing models of adolescent mental health by highlighting the potential importance of cognitive and self-related psychological resources in understanding perceived anxiety-related experiences.

The practical implications are equally noteworthy. The researchers suggest that schools may consider incorporating music-based and immersive digital experiences into broader well-being activities, psychological education programs, or extracurricular mental health initiatives. Such activities may provide engaging and interactive contexts in which students can reflect on their emotions, develop more adaptive ways of thinking, strengthen self-understanding, and build confidence in coping with difficulties. However, the researchers emphasize that these applications should be implemented as supportive or preventive activities rather than as substitutes for professional psychological or psychiatric treatment.

The researchers also acknowledge important technological and institutional considerations. The feasibility and accessibility of immersive technology may vary depending on hardware availability, technical support, cost, space management, supervision, and adolescents’ acceptance of head-mounted devices. Some adolescents may experience cybersickness, visual fatigue, discomfort, or low acceptance of head-mounted devices. The cost of VR headsets, software maintenance, content development, and staff training may create unequal opportunities for implementation across regions or institutions. The researchers caution that the findings should be interpreted within the specific technological and institutional context of this study and should not be generalized uncritically to all schools, community settings, or lower-resource environments.

The cultural specificity of the Chinese traditional music materials represents another important consideration. The emotional and reflective responses observed in this study may have been influenced by Chinese adolescents’ familiarity with these musical elements and the cultural meanings attached to them. As a result, the findings should not be assumed to apply equally to adolescents from other cultural backgrounds or to immersive music experiences based on other musical traditions. Future studies could examine whether similar associations are observed when the immersive music experience is adapted with culturally relevant music materials for adolescents in different cultural contexts.

Looking ahead, the researchers call for longitudinal and experimental designs to examine how perceived anxiety-related symptoms and related psychological constructs may change over time. Future research should also include broader psychological and contextual variables such as personality traits, family support, digital literacy, baseline mental health status, and prior exposure to music-based or immersive experiences. The researchers suggest combining self-report measures with qualitative interviews, behavioral observations, physiological indicators such as heart rate variability and cortisol levels, standardized anxiety measures, and clinician-rated or parent-reported indicators to enhance the robustness and validity of the findings.

For now, this study offers a tantalizing glimpse into how the convergence of music, culture, and immersive technology may support adolescent mental health. The finding that cognitive restructuring, self-acceptance, and self-efficacy statistically mediate the association between immersive music engagement and perceived anxiety relief suggests that the experience may work not by directly treating anxiety, but by cultivating the psychological resources that adolescents need to manage it themselves. As anxiety rates continue to rise among adolescents worldwide, approaches that combine emotional engagement with the cultivation of adaptive psychological resources may prove increasingly valuable—and this research provides a preliminary empirical foundation for exploring that possibility.

Subject of Research: Music-based immersive technology experience and adolescents’ perceived alleviation of anxiety symptoms: cross-sectional evidence on the mediating roles of cognitive restructuring, self-acceptance, and self-efficacy

Article Title: Music-based immersive technology experience and adolescents’ perceived alleviation of anxiety symptoms: cross-sectional evidence on the mediating roles of cognitive restructuring, self-acceptance, and self-efficacy

Article References: Ni, Y., Sun, Z., Li, Z., Piao, E., & Zhang, J. (2026). Music-based immersive technology experience and adolescents’ perceived alleviation of anxiety symptoms: cross-sectional evidence on the mediating roles of cognitive restructuring, self-acceptance, and self-efficacy. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 17, Article 1917295. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1917295

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1917295

Keywords: Music-based, immersive, technology, experience, adolescents, perceived, alleviation, anxiety, symptoms, cross-sectional, evidence, mediating