Brief Virtual Reality Therapy for Public Speaking Anxiety

Abstract

The primary goal of this research program was to investigate the effectiveness of virtual reality therapy (VRT) in reducing public speaking anxiety of university students. The prevalence and impact of public speaking anxiety as a type of Social Phobia are discussed. Studies of VRT as an emerging treatment for psychological problems are reviewed. In the present study, eight students completed VRT individual treatment and post-testing, and six students in a Wait-List control group completed post-testing. Assessment measures included four self-report inventories, self-report of Subjective Units of Discomfort during exposure to VRT and physiological measurements of heart rate during speaking tasks. Four weekly individual exposure treatment sessions of approximately 15 min each were conducted by the author serving as therapist. Results on self-report and physiological measures appear to indicate that four virtual reality treatment sessions were effective in reducing public speaking anxiety in university students, corroborating earlier studies of VRT's effectiveness as a psychotherapeutic modality. Future research directions are discussed, primarily the need for research on younger populations, to assess the effectiveness of VRT for earlier intervention with public speaking anxiety.

Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety of Software Engineers Using Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

“…Individuals with PSA usually tend to avoid anxietyeliciting situations [16]. They demonstrate a loss of physiological, cognitive and behavioral control where social or academic performance has become inevitable for the speakers.…”

“…The basic premise of exposure-based treatment is that individuals realize that the expected catastrophic situation does not happen through repeated approach toward fear provoking stimuli; thus, they have a chance to modify their maladaptive cognitions and reprocess their emotions in more functional manner [22]. Recently, VRET has increasingly been utilized to treat PSA [23,16,24,25]. In most cases, no differences have been found between VRET and exposure therapy; however, additional work is needed to address the equivalency of effect sizes.…”

Terapia de Exposición Mediante Realidad Virtual e Internet en el Trastorno de Ansiedad/Fobia Social: Una Revisión Cualitativa

“…Se realizaron 5 sesiones semanales (con una media de 15 minutos cada sesión) de tratamiento. Emilio S. García-García, ana i. roSa-alcázar & Pablo J. olivarES-olivarES En el estudio nº 2 según tabla 1 (Harris, Kemmerling & North, 2002), se contó con un total de 14 sujetos, de los cuales 8 pertenecían al grupo experimental (N=8) y 6 al grupo control (lista de espera). Los participantes del grupo experimental se sometieron a cuatro sesiones de tratamiento individual en RV, usando la escena de un auditorio virtual que veían a través del HMD.…”

Les thérapies utilisant la réalité virtuelle dans les troubles phobiques

“…D'autres études ont montré que cette amélioration clinique était supérieure à celle obtenue dans un groupe contrôle de type liste d'attente ou relaxation, notamment dans le cas de l'acrophobie [16], de l'arachnophobie [8], de la phobie sociale [11], ou de la phobie de l'avion [14]. Enfin, plusieurs études contrôlées comparant directement l'exposition in virtuo et l'exposition in vivo ont conclu à une efficacité comparable des deux méthodes, en particulier en cas de phobie sociale [12], de phobie de l'avion [18,21] et d'acrophobie [6].…”