Conxa Perpiñá

Virtual reality treatment of claustrophobia : a case report

The efficacy of a treatment for claustrophobia using only Virtual Reality (VR) exposure was examined. The subject was a 43-year-old female who suffered from clinically significant distress and impairment and sought psychological therapy. Eight individual VR graded exposure sessions were conducted. All self-report measures were reduced following VR exposure and were maintained at one month follow-up. The necessity of a theoretical framework for this new medium for exposure therapy is discussed.

Is the selective information processing of food and body words specific to patients with eating disorders

The selective processing of food- and body size-related information was investigated using a modified version of the Stroop task. Anorexic and bulimic patients and matched female controls were compared on the basis of categorical (diagnosis), dimensional (restraint and drive for thinness) criteria, or both. The findings suggest that the phenomenon assessed by the Stroop paradigm is not exclusive to patients with a clinical eating disorder, but patients and those control subjects who are restrained eaters with a high drive for thinness share a selective processing of information related to shape and eating. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings.

Presence and Reality Judgment in Virtual Environments: A Unitary Construct?

Presence and reality judgment are two important variables to take into account in the virtual reality field. So far, scientific literature has paid (and pays) attention to the construct of presence, trying to offer assessment measures that could seize such an elusive concept. However, the concept of reality judgment has received less attention, and, frequently, it has been subsumed into the concept of presence. Not much effort has been dedicated to test whether or not both constructs refer to the same domain. Most likely there are relationships between both variables, but it is also possible that they have differentiated domains. The aim of the present work is to design a self-report measure that assesses both constructs, and to carry out the validation process with Spanish and North American samples.

Virtual reality and psychotherapy.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a new technology consisting on a graphic environment in which the user, not only has the feeling of being physically present in a virtual world, but he/she can interact with it. The first VR workstations were designed for big companies in order to create environments that simulate certain situations to train professionals. However, at this moment a great expansion of this technology is taking place in several fields, including the area of health. Especially interesting for us is the use of VR as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of psychological disorders. Compared to the traditional treatments, VR has many advantages (e.g., it is a protected environment for the patient, he/she can re-experience many times the feared situation, etc.). There are already data on the effectiveness of this technology in the treatment of different psychological disorders; here anxiety disorders, eating disorders and sexual disorders are reviewed. Finally, this chapter ends with some words about the limitations of VR and future perspectives.

Telepsychology: Public Speaking Fear Treatment on the Internet

UNTIL VERY RECENTLY , the possibility of starting real telemedicine or telepsychology systems was restricted by the cost of the equipment and by the lack of adequate infrastructures. Nonetheless, the technological advances we are witnessing at present have allowed the publication of a series of pioneering works with good and promising results. The analysis of what is happening in the field of telepsychology points to an important development to come in the following years. This work presents a telepsychology system to the treatment of public speaking fear. The system is composed of: (a) an assessment protocol that gives the patient a diagnosis of his/her problem, including the interference it is causing him/her, its severity, and the degree of fear and avoidance it is producing; (b) a structured treatment protocol, organized in separate blocks reflecting the patient’s progress; in this way, it is possible to ensure that the patient does not skip any step in the treatment (something quite common in the traditional self-help manuals), gaining more control over the process; and (c) an outcome protocol that assesses treatment effectiveness, not only at its end, but also at every intermediate step. It is the first work in a promising research line that examines the possibility of using the Internet for the treatment of psychological disorders. If the program proposed here achieves the necessary effectiveness and soundness, the range of psychological problems to which the program could be applied will broaden in the near future.

The Vepsy Updated Project: Virtual Reality in Clinical Psychology

Many of us grew up with the naive assumption that couches are the best used therapeutic tools in psychotherapy. But tools for psychotherapy are evolving in a much more complex environment than a designers chaise lounge. In particular, virtual reality (VR) devices have the potential for appearing soon in many consulting rooms. The use of VR in medicine is not a novelty. Applications of virtual environments for health care have been developed in the following areas: surgical procedures (remote surgery or telepresence, augmented or enhanced surgery, and planning and simulation of procedures before surgery); preventive medicine and patient education; medical education and training; visualization of massive medical databases; and architectural design for health care facilities. However, there is a growing recognition that VR can play an important role in clinical psychology, too. To exploit and understand this potential is the main goal of the Telemedicine and Portable Virtual Environment in Clinical Psychology--VEPSY Updated--a European Community-funded research project (IST-2000-25323, http://www.vepsy.com). The project will provide innovative tools-telemedicine and portable-for the treatment of patients, clinical trials to verify their viability, and action plans for dissemination of its results to an extended audience-potential users and influential groups. The project will also develop different personal computer (PC)-based virtual reality modules to be used in clinical assessment and treatment. In particular, the developed modules will address the following pathologies: anxiety disorders; male impotence and premature ejaculation; and obesity, bulimia, and binge-eating disorders.

Psychological variables and reality judgment in virtual environments: the roles of absorption and dissociation.

Literature on virtual reality (VR) and psychology has focused on the influence that some basic psychological processes have on VR. Although psychological processes may be defined as common to all humans, there are individual differences that might make it difficult to provide the same VR experience for everyone. Of the several personality and psychological variables that might be relevant to the VR field, this study focuses on two: absorption and dissociation. Both psychological dimensions are deeply interrelated and might play an important role in the immersion of subjects in virtual environments and in the reality attributions they make. Thus, the purpose of this study was to ascertain personality correlates on differences regarding the VR experience. The subjects were 39 psychology undergraduate students who were immersed in a VR environment for 15 minutes. Our data suggest that both absorption and dissociation influenced central issues regarding reality judgment in VR.

The treatment of claustrophobia with virtual reality: changes in other phobic behaviors not specifically treated.

This study was designed to determine the effectiveness of Virtual Reality (VR) exposure in the case of a patient with a diagnosis of two specific phobias (claustrophobia and storms) and panic disorder with agoraphobia. The treatment consisted of eight, individual, VR-graded exposure sessions designed specifically to treat claustrophobia. We obtained data at pretreatment, posttreatment, and 3-month follow-up on several clinical measures. Results point out the effectiveness of the VR procedure for the treatment of claustrophobia. An important change appeared in all measures after treatment completion. We also observed a generalization of improvement from claustrophobic situations to the other specific phobic and agoraphobic situations that were not treated. We can conclude that VR exposure was effective in reducing fear in closed spaces, in increasing self-efficacy in claustrophobic situations, and in improving other problems not specifically treated. Moreover, changes were maintained at 3 months after treatment.

A New Realistic 3D Body Representation in Virtual Environments for the Treatment of Disturbed Body Image in Eating Disorders

In the last few years virtual reality has become an efficient tool for the treatment of eating disorders. One of the main problems in virtual environments finding a realistic body model that can be modified according to a patiens criterion. Several 2D morphing techniques have been used for changing the body of the subject. In this article we present a new method for accurate 3D deformation of a human body model that uses a reduced number of parameters. The original goal was to reform different parts of a 3D human body through geometry. The chosen algorithm is based on a series of boxes around the geometry parts to be changed. Any change in the position of a box vertex is converted to geometry deformation and eventually to oportune displacement of the neighbour boxes. As discontinuities have to be avoided, all boxes have a field of deformation decreasing in intensity as distance increases. To achieve a high grade of realism, a set of user photographs taken from several angles are positioned at the head of...

Self-Consciousness Scale: A Study of Spanish Housewives

The purpose of this study was to examine the applicability with 93 Spanish housewives of the translated Self-consciousness Scale. We present reliability measures and normative data, and we also include data for two clinical samples (31 depressive and 31 asthmatic women patients).