Exploring Virtual Social Environments for Exposure Therapy in Adolescents with Social Anxiety : A Pilot Study
Year: 2024
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a prevalent mental health condition that often begins in childhood or adolescence and can persist into adulthood if untreated.Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) has proven to be an effective and acceptable intervention.However, the use of social settings such as restaurants and cafeterias in VRET targeting adolescents is rare.This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of a 3D Virtual Reality (VR) restaurant-themed application prototype.The application is designed with three exposure levels (mild, moderate, and intense) as a therapeutic tool for clinical use.The objectives were to determine whether the application could provide stimuli to induce anxiety necessary for exposure therapy and evaluate the user experience.Eleven young participants, mostly socially anxious, evaluated the VR prototype, providing both quantitative and qualitative data through the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS), the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ), the User Experience Questionnaire Plus (UEQ+), and a semistructured interview.The VR prototype induced varied anxiety levels, with minimal anxiety reported at the Intense level and mild-to-moderate anxiety prevalent across all exposure levels.Participants experienced a high sense of general presence despite lower realism in their VR experience.While the exposure levels had an impact on participants' subjective anxiety, no effect of presence was observed.The prototype had higher ratings for usefulness in the user experience evaluation, though visual aesthetics received the lowest ratings.The study findings emphasise the potential of VRET for social anxiety disorder treatment and highlight key design considerations for implementing exposure hierarchy for more anxiety-inducing effects.
Author: Agbaje, Fareed Gbolaniyi
Institution: Tampere University
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7132906486