Rich Interactions in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy: A Pilot-Study evaluating a System for Presentation Training

Abstract

Public Speaking Anxiety (PSA) or discomfort while speaking in public is a wide spread cognitive disorder. Exposure therapy offers the opportunity to treat patients suffering PSA by exposing them to the phobic stimulus. To plan and organize an in-vivo exposure takes a lot of effort in recruiting people for an audience and orchestrating their behavior. Virtual Reality (VR) offers the possibility to generate the audiences that can be controlled by an orchestrator according patient's individual needs. This paper explores a system that enables the therapists to richly interact verbally and non-verbally with immersed presenters. For evaluation, we conducted a study with 24 healthy participants in two groups (12 participants each). Our results indicate that the direct verbal interaction between an orchestrator outside the VR and an immersed presenter are enhancing the presenter's experience and increasing the efficiency of therapy process. The non-verbal dimension is realized that an orchestrator can takeover an avatar using a motion-tracking camera that controls then the avatar's movements. Our results indicate that the transition of animations and movements are not impacting the experience negatively.

Keeping It Real!

“…With the click of their mouse, a therapist can simulate any stimuli, ranging from spiders to large crowds (given a VE built for such simulations). Indeed, as Koller et al [20] stated, virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is potentially a major improvement over both using real-world stimuli (invivo exposure therapy), which may be difficult or cost-prohibitive to procure, and relying on the patient's imagination (in-situ exposure therapy). Of course, VRET requires the virtual environment to elicit realistic reactions and emotions on the part of the patient, and thus, presence has been heavily researched in this context [20][21][22][23].…”