Social Environment Simulation in VR Elicits a Distinct Reaction in Subjects with Different Levels of Anxiety and Somatoform Dissociation (original) (raw)
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J o u r n a l o f C y b e r T h e r a p y & R e h a b i l i t a t i o n W i n t e r 2 0 1 0 , Vo l u m e 3 , I s s u e 4 © Vi r t u a l R e a l i t y M e d i c a l I n s t i t u t e The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum et al., 1993) is currently the most commonly used psy-chosocial stressor to generate a response of the axes involved in stress. The TSST has proven effective in the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. In addition, new technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), are being integrated into stress research protocols (Kelly et al., 2007). To determine whether TSST as applied to VR leads to the sympathetic and neuroendocrine activation in a group of healthy individuals. Also, this study aims to connect this response with different psychological variables regarding stress vulnerability, psychopathology, and personality. Twenty-one university students (6 male and 15 female) were exposed to a modified version of the TSST adapted to a virtual environment (VE), in which they have to deliver a speech. Electrodermal activity and salivary cortisol secretion were simultaneously registered at different instances. After the task, sympathetic activation was observed in all participants, as well as increase in the cortisol secretion in 14 of the students. This increase was statistically significant in the moment prior to the speech and the moment after in the responder group. In the same fashion, statistically significant differences were found in the responder group only regarding obsession and compulsion scales and extro-version, which were higher in the responder group. Our findings support the use of the TSST paradigm in VR as an experimental situation appropriate to research designs in laboratory aiming to study the modulation of the axes implied in response to stress.
Controlling Social Stress in Virtual Reality Environments
2014
Virtual reality exposure therapy has been proposed as a viable alternative in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder. Therapists could benefit from extensive control of anxiety eliciting stimuli during virtual exposure. Two stimuli controls are studied in this study: the social dialogue situation, and the dialogue feedback responses (negative or positive) between a human and a virtual character. In the first study, 16 participants were exposed in three virtual reality scenarios: a neutral virtual world, blind date scenario, and job interview scenario. Results showed a significant difference between the three virtual scenarios in the level of self-reported anxiety and heart rate. In the second study, 24 participants were exposed to a job interview scenario in a virtual environment where the ratio between negative and positive dialogue feedback responses of a virtual character was systematically varied on-the-fly. Results yielded that within a dialogue the more positive dialogue feedback resulted in less self-reported anxiety, lower heart rate, and longer answers, while more negative dialogue feedback of the virtual character resulted in the opposite. The correlations between on the one hand the dialogue stressor ratio and on the other hand the means of SUD score, heart rate and audio length in the eight dialogue conditions showed a strong relationship: r(6) = 0.91, p = 0.002; r(6) = 0.76, p = 0.028 and r(6) = −0.94, p = 0.001 respectively. Furthermore, more anticipatory anxiety reported before exposure was found to coincide with more self-reported anxiety, and shorter answers during the virtual exposure. These results demonstrate that social dialogues in a virtual environment can be effectively manipulated for therapeutic purposes.
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 2020
In this study, task-related stress induction through Stroop task and social stress induction protocol based on elements of Trier Social Stress Test are examined. The aim of the paper is to find the optimal combination of social and task-related stress to be used to consistently and reliably induce a stressful reaction. In total 16 healthy subjects participated in this study that seeks to find and compare the different stressors and their relation to physiological reactivity. Our findings show that electrodermal activity measurements are suitable when using a combination of stressors while heart rate and Root Mean Square of the Successive Differences highlight a greater reactivity to task-stress.