Article

Sense of presence inside a feared (virtual) tunnel

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Abstract

Virtual Reality in Exposure Therapy allows exposing patients to simulations of feared situations, even in cases where actual exposure is not possible or difficult. We have created a Web application that helps therapists performing this type of therapy when dealing with patients that suffer from anxiety of crossing road tunnels. The application contains a set of animations of virtual scenarios recreating a car journey across a tunnel visualized from the point of view of the traveler sitting beside the driver and exhibiting a set of potential anxiety inductors. In this paper we describe the application and report a user study to assess the adequacy of our application as a VRET tool and also to compare the impact of visualizing the animations resorting to two distinct low cost apparatus: a versatile immersive equipment and a big projection.

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... In the virtual reality environment, the car passes through a tunnel with lighting adjusted to resemble natural daylight on entry and exit, with increasing darkness and increasing lightness upon exit. The sound of traffic was also included to enhance the realism of the simulations [22]. The above driving phobia VRET studies provide a solid basis for continued research. ...
... Costa et al. used subjective discomfort scores and heart rate to measure subjects' physiological response and sense of presence [21]. Additionally, in Claudio et al.'s fear of driving in tunnels research, questionnaires measured the outcome of the experiment and no real-time data was collected [22]. Most pervious VRET literature uses heart rate for real-time data tracking. ...
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... Exposure to the specific situation leads to anxiety which may be followed by panic attacks. Specific phobias are numerous and include fear of heights (acrophobia) (Haworth et al., 2012;Schafer et al., 2015;Shunnag & Reader, 2016), being in closed spaces (claustrophobia) (Christofi & Michael, 2016;Bruce & Regenbrecht, 2009), falling (Giotakos et al., 2007), spider (arachnophobia) (Haworth et al., 2012;Eustace et al., 2013) and driving (Claudio et al., 2015;Taheri et al., 2016). Generic phobias include social anxiety (Walkom, 2016;Wu, 2019) and stress (Repetto et al., 2013;Rothbaum, 2010). ...
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Sistema de Realidade Virtual para Tratamento de Fobias
  • G A Medeiros
Virtual Reality Technology, Wiley-Interscience
  • G C Burdea
  • P Coiffet