Arachnophobia assessment with the use of virtual reality exposure therapy and biometric monitoring
Year: 2023
Type: dissertation
Abstract: A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal, and it usually becomes an impairment for people’s daily lives. There are some treatments for it and one of the most common forms of treatment is exposure therapy, having its efficacy already proven as there are numerous clinical trials which indicate it. To circumvent the disadvantages present in in vivo exposure, technology can be used to create a virtual environment which substitutes the feared stimuli. To make it easier for the patient to engage and try to interact with their feared stimuli a process of gamification can be used. Using gamification not only makes it easier to engage but also makes it more entertaining for the patient and increases the likelihood of them continuing the exposure until the end. To help in the treatment of arachnophobia, this dissertation has the objective of using Meta Quest 2 for the creation of a virtual reality serious game, which features a small narrative, where exposure therapy is conducted on users while monitoring their biometric data. This monitoring is done with a device called Plux which uses a sensor to get an electrocardiogram of the patient, and making use of this data a visualization platform is generated to discuss possible relations to the anxiety shown during the exposure. The results obtained showed that, throughout the exposure, the users’ anxiety was being reduced successfully the longer they interacted with the virtual feared stimuli.
Author: Moreira, Diogo Emanuel de Oliveira
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7026864449