Avoiding virtual humans in a constrained environment: Exploration of novel behavioural measures

Patotskaya, Yuliya; Hoyet, Ludovic; Olivier, Anne-Hélène; Pettré, Julien; Zibrek, Katja

doi:10.1016/j.cag.2023.01.001

Cited by 14 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 46 publications

(94 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The capacity of VR to create naturalistic, controlled, and customizable environments that closely mirror key aspects of real-life social interactions makes it a valuable tool for conducting ecologically valid research and implementing therapeutic applications with realistic exposure situations (Patotskaya et al, 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying the Influence of Single Social Interactions on Approach and Avoidance Behavior – A Multimodal Investigation in Immersive Virtual Reality

Gado,

Gamer

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Adaptive social approach and avoidance behavior is of utmost importance for social functioning and an imbalance in these behavioral tendencies may constitute a risk factor for the etiology and maintenance of mental illness. To investigate these processes in a naturalistic environment with high ecological validity and experimental control, we implemented an immersive virtual environment that combines a social conditioning procedure with a social approach-avoidance test. In this environment, we conducted two experiments (both with N = 48 female participants; data collected in summer 2023 and winter 2023/24) to examine whether participants differing in trait social anxiety develop adaptive approach and avoidance tendencies towards differently conditioned virtual agents on a behavioral, subjective, and autonomic level. Overall, we observed significant effects of the social conditioning procedure on participants’ exploration behavior. After initial hypervigilance, participants exhibited avoidance of social threats as indicated by a higher interpersonal distance and decreased visual attention towards the negatively conditioned virtual agent. We found no association between hypervigilance and trait social anxiety, but observed higher fear ratings and enhanced avoidance of social threats in participants with elevated anxiety levels. This study demonstrates the potential of immersive virtual environments for examining social learning processes under conditions resembling real-life social encounters.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying the Influence of Single Social Interactions on Approach and Avoidance Behavior – A Multimodal Investigation in Immersive Virtual Reality

Gado,

Gamer

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To assess H3, we computed metrics used for proximity and collision avoidance studies [Berton et al 2020;Patotskaya et al 2023]. We only considered the trials where the participant chose to cross the line through the side of a studied agent, focusing on central gazing agents only (not the ones on the extreme parts of a fouragents line -most of our metrics could not be computed correctly), and omitting the trials with two gazing agents -local deviations in distance/orientation could not be firmly attributed to one of them.…”

Section: Dependent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%