The influences of virtual social feedback on social anxiety disorders

Abstract

Background:Social feedback in the virtual environment is a critical part of successful virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET), and identifying the influences of virtual social feedback on social anxiety patients is necessary.Aims:The present study aimed to explore the influences of ambiguous and negative virtual social feedback on social anxiety patients and a health control group (HCG).Method:Twenty-six social anxiety patients and 26 healthy participants were recruited. All participants were exposed to a virtual public speaking scenario. The participants were required to make two 3-minute speeches while the virtual audiences gave them either ambiguous feedback or negative feedback. The subjective units of discomfort (SUD) and heart rate were collected during the process.Results:The results showed that SAD individuals reported higher levels of subjective anxiety than those in the HCG, and the between-group differences were larger in the mild ambiguous condition than in the intense negative condition.Conclusions:This study indicates that social anxiety patients have an interpretation bias towards ambiguous virtual social feedback. Therefore, it is important for VR-based interventions to take into account not only the valence of the feedback but also the ambiguity aspect.

Investigating the Influence of Sound Design for Inducing Anxiety in Virtual Public Speaking

“…In our case, because public speaking is first and foremost a social interaction, the presence sub-concept of social presence is arguably the most important to consider. We can link this to results obtained by Kishimoto and Ding [7], who studied the influences of ambiguous and negative virtual social feedback on anxiety and presence. If no significant differences where found on feels of presence, participants with social anxiety disorders presented higher level of anxiety during public speaking in front of an audience displaying ambiguous feedback compared to an audience with negative feedback.…”

Effects of mask-wearing on social anxiety: an exploratory review

“…When access to information indicative of one's social performance is diminished, discomfort may arise. Research indicates that individuals with SA are particularly susceptible to discomfort elicited by ambiguity (Kishimoto & Ding, 2019;Moscovitch & Hofmann, 2007), and that they are likely to interpret ambiguous cues in negative ways (for a review, see Chen et al, 2020). These negative interpretation biases activated by ambiguous social feedback may be further reinforced by post-event rumination in which individuals with SA selectively focus on negative moments and interpretations from recent social encounters (Gavric et al, 2017;Zou & Abbott, 2012), or remember positive or ambiguous moments in more negative ways (Glazier & Alden, 2019;Romano et al, 2020).…”

Virtual Reality Therapy in Social Anxiety Disorder

“…Results revealed that positive dialog feedback was associated with significantly less self-reported anxiety, lower heart rate, and longer answers than negative dialog feedback. Similarly, Kishimoto et al [11] instructed 26 individuals with SAD and 26 healthy controls to give two 3-min speeches and examined the impact of ambiguous and negative virtual social feedback. Compared with healthy controls, individuals with SAD reported higher levels of subjective anxiety and the difference was larger in the ambiguous condition than in the negative condition.…”