An Experiment on Public Speaking Anxiety in Response to Three Different Types of Virtual Audience

Abstract

This paper describes an experiment to assess the anxiety responses of people giving five minute presentations to virtual audiences consisting of eight male avatars. There were three different types of audience behaviour -an emotionally neutral audience that remained static throughout the talk, a positive audience which exhibited friendly and appreciative behaviour towards the speaker, and a negative audience, which exhibited hostile and bored expressions throughout the talk. A second factor was immersion: half of the 40 subjects experienced the virtual seminar room through a head-tracked head-mounted display and the remainder on a desktop system. Responses were measured using standard Personal Report of Confidence as a Public Speaker (PRCS) which was elicited prior to the experiment and after each talk. Several other standard psychological measures such as SCL-90-R (for screening for psychological disorder), the SAD and the FNE were also measured prior to the experiment. Other response variables included subjectively assessed somaticisation and a subject self-rating scale on performance during the talk.The subjects gave the talk twice each to a different audience, but in the analysis only the results of the first talk are presented -thus making this a between-groups design. The results show that posttalk PRCS is significantly and positively correlated to PRCS measured prior to the experiment in the case only of the positive and static audiences. For the negative audience, prior PRCS was not a predictor of post-PRCS which was higher than for the other two audiences and constant. The negative audience clearly provoked an anxiety response irrespective of the normal level of public speaking confidence of the subject. The somatic response also showed a higher level of anxiety for the negative audience than for the other two, but self-rating was generally higher only for the static audience, each of these results taking into account prior PRCS.

Experiences in Using Immersive Virtual Characters to Educate Medical Communication Skills

“…They responded similarly to when they spoke to an audience of real people. Further, experiencing a virtual social situation, may reduce anxiety in reality [4].…”

“…In studies, the importance of rendering fidelity was examined for interpersonal communication [19]. Results suggest that emotions, such as embarrassment, fear, irritation, and self-awareness, could be elicited in real people by virtual characters [4].…”

Creating Virtual Characters

“…One of the first of these was the virtual audience [14]. Participants were asked to give a short oral presentation while immersed in a virtual reality display.…”

“…In front of them they could see an audience composed of a small number of animated virtual characters. [14], the London underground [2], the Milgram recreation [16], the virtual bar [11], the socially anxious virtual character [12] and the medical consultation [13].…”

Communicating emotions in expressive avatars

“…These avatars displayed a variety of human emotions and behaviours. They have reported on an experiment designed to assess the anxiety responses of people giving 5 min presentations to virtual audiences consisting of eight male avatars (Pertaub, Slater and Barker, 2002). The presenters faced three different types of audience behaviour: (a) an emotionally neutral audience that remained static throughout the talk, (b) a positive audience that exhibited friendly and appreciative behaviour toward the speaker; (c) a negative audience that exhibited hostile and bored expressions throughout the talk.…”