Social Buffering of Fear in Virtual Reality

Open Human-Computer Interaction Bachelor Master Project Thesis No Affiliation

Background

Many people worldwide suffer from anxiety disorders. The disorder is prevalent in two percent of the adult population in the EU and accounts for ten percent of mental disorders in primary care (1). It is usually treated with exposure therapy (2). In recent years, virtual reality exposure therapy has become more common and is at least as efficient as in vivo therapy (3) while being more flexible and cheaper. One phenomenon that can be used to enhance exposure therapy further is to buffer fear responses with social support. Recently, Qi et al. (4) have shown that even the mere presence of a stranger can reduce physiological responses to aversive sound cues. A follow-up study by Qi et al. (5) showed that this response also occurs in virtual reality with the mere presence of virtual agents. These findings yield high potential to evolve virtual exposure therapy with virtual agents for improved therapy outcomes.

This project or thesis is concerned with investigating the social buffering effect with virtual agents and is done in cooperation with the Translational Social Neuroscience Unit of the University Hospital Würzburg. Theses and projects will have to expand the existing Unreal prototype by adding different virtual agents, changing the virtual environment, or porting the prototype to Unity. A study will be conducted to measure the effects of different agents on social buffering.

Tasks

This project will focus on the following tasks:

• Literature research about the theoretical background
• Modifcation of the existing VR prototype
• Execution of a user study to investigate the effect of agents on social buffering
• Evaluation and presentation of results

Prerequisites

• Experience with conducting user studies
• Optional: Experience with the Unreal game engine
• Optional: Experience with physiological measurements

Literature

• 1: Roselind Lieb, Eni Becker, and Carlo Altamura. The epidemiology of generalized anxiety disorder in Europe. European Neuropsychopharmacology 15, no. 4 (2005), 445-452.
• 2: Thomas L. Rodebaugh, Robert M. Holaway, and Richard G. Heimberg. The treatment of social anxiety disorder. Clinical Psychology Review 24, no. 7 (2004), 883-908.
• 3: Mark B. Powers, and Paul MG Emmelkamp. Virtual reality exposure therapy for anxiety disorders: A meta-analysis. Journal of anxiety disorders 22, no. 3 (2008), 561-569.
• 4: Yanyan Qi, Martin J. Herrmann, Luisa Bell, Anna Fackler, Shihui Han, Jürgen Deckert, and Grit Hein. The mere physical presence of another person reduces human autonomic responses to aversive sounds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 287, no. 1919 (2020), 20192241.
• 5: Yanyan Qi, Dorothée Bruch, Philipp Krop, Martin J. Herrmann, Marc E. Latoschik, Jürgen Deckert, and Grit Hein. Social buffering of human fear is shaped by gender, social concern, and the presence of real vs virtual agents. Translational psychiatry 11, no. 1 (2021), 641.

Contact Persons at the University Würzburg