Patrice Renaud

Delivering Cognitive-Behavior Therapy for Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia in Videoconference

Delivering psychotherapy by videoconference could significantly increase the accessibility of empirically validated treatments. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) for panic disorder with agoraphobia (PDA) when the therapy is delivered either face-to-face or by videoconference. A sample of 21 participants was treated either face-to-face or by videoconference. Results showed that CBT delivered by videoconference was as effective as CBT delivered face-to-face. There was a statistically significant reduction in all measures, and the number of panic-free participants among those receiving CBT by videoconference was 81% at post-treatment and 91% at the 6-month follow-up. None of the comparisons with face-to-face psychotherapy suggested that CBT delivered by videoconference was less effective. These results were confirmed by analyses of effect size. The participants reported the development of an excellent therapeutic alliance in videoconference as early as the first therapy session. The importance of these results for treatment accessibility is discussed. Hypotheses are proposed to explain the rapid creation of strong therapeutic alliances in videoconferencing.

Anxiety and Presence during VR Immersion: A Comparative Study of the Reactions of Phobic and Non-phobic Participants in Therapeutic Virtual Environments Derived from Computer Games

Virtual reality can be used to provide phobic clients with therapeutic exposure to phobogenic stimuli. However, purpose-built therapeutic VR hardware and software can be expensive and difficult to adapt to individual client needs. In this study, inexpensive and readily adaptable PC computer games were used to provide exposure therapy to 13 phobic participants and 13 non-phobic control participants. It was found that anxiety could be induced in phobic participants by exposing them to phobogenic stimuli in therapeutic virtual environments derived from computer games (TVEDG). Assessments were made of the impact of simulator sickness and of sense of presence on the phobogenic effectiveness of TVEDGs. Participants reported low levels of simulator sickness, and the results indicate that simulator sickness had no significant impact on either anxiety or sense of presence. Group differences, correlations, and regression analyses indicate a synergistic relationship between presence and anxiety. These results do not support Slaters contention that presence and emotion are orthogonal.

Anxiety increases the feeling of presence in virtual reality

Given previous studies indicating a significant correlation between anxiety and presence, the purpose of this investigation was to explore the direction of the causal relationship between them. The sample consisted of 31 adults suffering from snake phobia. The study featured a randomized within-between design with two conditions and three counterbalanced immersions: (a) a baseline control immersion (BASELINE), (b) an immersion in a threatening and anxiety-inducing environment (ANX), and (c) an immersion in a nonthreatening environment that should not induce anxiety (NOANX). In the NOANX environment, participants were immersed for 5 min in a virtual Egyptian desert. They were told that the environment was safe and contained no snakes. The ANX immersion was identical, except that participants were led to believe that a multitude of hidden and dangerous snakes were lurking in the environment. A period of distraction (reading a text on relaxation) separated the ANX and NOANX immersions. Experimenters recorded presence and anxiety in the middle of and after each VR immersion. These brief measures of presence supported our hypothesis and were significantly higher in the anxious immersion than in the baseline or the nonanxious immersion. This finding was not corroborated by the presence questionnaire, where scores varied significantly in the opposite direction. The results from the brief one-item measures of presence support the significant contribution of emotions felt during the immersion on the subjective feeling of presence. The mixed results with the presence questionnaire are discussed, along with psychological factors potentially involved in presence.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia in Videoconference: Preliminary Results

Many studies have shown the feasibility of psychiatric consultation in telehealth, and some have addressed the effectiveness of telepsychotherapy. However, outcome studies on telepsychiatry essentially amount to a few case studies, none of which have used an empirically validated psychosocial treatment to treat a specific mental disorder. This article presents the preliminary results of an outcome study on the effectiveness of telepsychotherapy for panic disorder with agoraphobia. Participants received 12 sessions of cognitive-behavior therapy, which is an empirically validated treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia. The treatment was delivered via videoconference by trained therapists according to a standardized treatment manual. The remote site was located at 130 km north of the local site and both were linked by six ISDN lines. Telepsychotherapy demonstrated statistically and clinically significant improvements on measures of target symptoms (frequency, of panic attacks, panic apprehension, seve...

Behavioral avoidance dynamics in the presence of a virtual spider

Tracking behavior with a virtual spider and a neutral target is compared in fearful and nonfearful subjects. Head-tracking in virtual environments appears to be a scale-free behavior with long-range fractal-like patterns. Moreover, these fractal patterns change according to what the target affords the tracker and the level of behavioral avoidance manifested by the subjects. Results are interpreted in terms of ecological psychology and nonlinear dynamics, and implications for virtual reality (VR) psychology are outlined.

Measuring Sexual Preferences in Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study

Virtual reality (VR), as a method to assess sexual preferences, is explored. Dynamics of the subjective point of view (POV), subjective affective state, and feeling of presence, as measured following the interaction with a virtual naked model, appear as promising ways to probe sexual preferences as expressed in immersion. Theoretical aspects of VR psychology and further steps in developing a sexual preferences assessment method are delineated.

FEBAM: A Feature-Extracting Bidirectional Associative Memory

In this paper, a new model that can ultimately create its own set of perceptual features is proposed. Using a bidirectional associative memory (BAM)-inspired architecture, the resulting model inherits properties such as attractor-like behavior and successful processing of noisy inputs, while being able to achieve principal component analysis (PCA) tasks such as feature extraction and dimensionality reduction. The model is tested by simulating image reconstruction and blind source separation tasks. Simulations show that the model fares particularly well compared to current neural PCA and independent component analysis (ICA) algorithms. It is argued the model possesses more cognitive explanative power than any other nonlinear/linear PCA and ICA algorithm.

Eye-Tracking in Immersive Environments: A General Methodology to Analyze Affordance-Based Interactions from Oculomotor Dynamics

This paper aims at presenting a new methodology to study how perceptual and motor processes organized themselves in order to achieve invariant visual information picking-up in virtual immersions. From a head-mounted display, head and eye movements were recorded using tracking devices (magnetic and infrared) that render the six degrees-of-freedom associated with the position and orientation of head movements, and two degrees-of-freedom from one eye. We measured the continuous line of sights deviation from a pre-selected area on a virtual stimulus. Some preliminary analyses of the dynamical properties of the emergent perceptual and motor patterns are presented as they are considered to be representative of the process of affordance extraction.

Efficacité d'un traitement d'exposition en réalité virtuelle pour le traitement de l'arachnophobie chez l'enfant une étude pilote

Resume Objectif evaluer l’efficacite potentielle de l’exposition par realite virtuelle dans le traitement de l’arachnophobie chez l’enfant. Methode Cette etude repose sur un protocole sans condition temoin, complemente par un devis de cas uniques a niveaux de bases multiples en fonction des individus. L’echantillon se compose de neuf enfants et jeunes adolescents arachnophobes. Les participants se trouvent assignes au hasard a l’un des trois niveaux de bases: trois, quatre ou cinq semaines. Par la suite, ils recoivent six sessions de therapie cognitive-comportementale de 75 minutes suivant un manuel de traitement standardise. Des questionnaires et mesures breves reliees a la phobie et a l’immersion virtuelle sont aussi administres avant, pendant, apres le traitement ainsi qu’au suivi de 6 mois. Resultats les symptomes des participants diminuent de facon significative et les gains se maintiennent a la relance de 6 mois. Conclusion l’exposition virtuelle represente une facon prometteuse pour traiter les phobies chez les enfants, bien que des etudes a plus large echelle demeurent necessaires. Implication Ce nouvel outil donne a la therapie un aspect attractif qui pourrait encourager les enfants a entreprendre et poursuivre une therapie par exposition.

How Ego Depletion Affects Sexual Self-Regulation: Is It More Than Resource Depletion?

Rational thinking and decision making are impacted when in a state of sexual arousal. The inability to self-regulate arousal can be linked to numerous problems, like sexual risk taking, infidelity, and sexual coercion. Studies have shown that most men are able to exert voluntary control over their sexual excitation with various levels of success. Both situational and dispositional factors can influence self-regulation achievement. The goal of this research was to investigate how ego depletion, a state of low self-control capacity, interacts with personality traits—propensities for sexual excitation and inhibition—and cognitive absorption, to cause sexual self-regulation failure. The sexual responses of 36 heterosexual males were assessed using penile plethysmography. They were asked to control their sexual arousal in two conditions, with and without ego depletion. Results suggest that ego depletion has opposite effects based on the trait sexual inhibition, as individuals moderately inhibited showed an increase in performance while highly inhibited ones showed a decrease. These results challenge the limited resource model of self-regulation and point to the importance of considering how people adapt to acute and high challenging conditions.