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Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia
Specific phobias are the most common anxiety disorder and are characterized by avoidance behavior. Avoidance behavior impacts daily function and is proposed to impair extinction learning. However, despite its prevalence, its objective assessment remains a challenge. To this end, we developed a fully...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9094686/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35571283 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.827673 |
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author | Binder, Florian P. Pöhlchen, Dorothee Zwanzger, Peter Spoormaker, Victor I. |
author_facet | Binder, Florian P. Pöhlchen, Dorothee Zwanzger, Peter Spoormaker, Victor I. |
author_sort | Binder, Florian P. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Specific phobias are the most common anxiety disorder and are characterized by avoidance behavior. Avoidance behavior impacts daily function and is proposed to impair extinction learning. However, despite its prevalence, its objective assessment remains a challenge. To this end, we developed a fully automated experimental procedure using immersive virtual reality. The procedure contained a behavioral search, forced-choice, and an approach task with varying degrees of freedom and task relevance of the stimuli. In this study, we examined the sensitivity and feasibility of these tasks to assess avoidance behavior in patients with specific phobia. We adapted the tasks by replacing the originally conditioned stimuli with a spider and a neutral animal and investigated 31 female participants composed of 15 spider-phobic and 16 non-phobic participants. As the non-phobics were quite heterogeneous in terms of their Fear of Spiders Questionnaire (FSQ) scores, we subdivided them into six “fearfuls” that had elevated FSQ scores, and 10 “non-fearfuls” that had no fear of spiders. The phobics successfully managed to complete the procedure and showed consistent avoidance behavior across all behavioral tasks. Compared to the non-fearfuls, which did not show any avoidance behavior at all, the phobics looked at the spider much more often and clearly directed their body toward it in the search task. In the approach task, they hesitated most when they were close to the spider, and their difficulty to touch the spider was reflected in a strong increase in right hand acceleration changes. The fearfuls showed avoidance behavior depending on the tasks: strongest in the search task and weakest in the approach task. Additionally, we identified subjective valence ratings of the spider as the main influence on both objective avoidance behavior and subjective well-being after exposure, mediating the effect of the FSQ. In summary, the behavioral tasks are well suited to assess avoidance behavior in phobic participants and provide detailed insights into the process of avoidance. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9094686 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90946862022-05-12 Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia Binder, Florian P. Pöhlchen, Dorothee Zwanzger, Peter Spoormaker, Victor I. Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience Specific phobias are the most common anxiety disorder and are characterized by avoidance behavior. Avoidance behavior impacts daily function and is proposed to impair extinction learning. However, despite its prevalence, its objective assessment remains a challenge. To this end, we developed a fully automated experimental procedure using immersive virtual reality. The procedure contained a behavioral search, forced-choice, and an approach task with varying degrees of freedom and task relevance of the stimuli. In this study, we examined the sensitivity and feasibility of these tasks to assess avoidance behavior in patients with specific phobia. We adapted the tasks by replacing the originally conditioned stimuli with a spider and a neutral animal and investigated 31 female participants composed of 15 spider-phobic and 16 non-phobic participants. As the non-phobics were quite heterogeneous in terms of their Fear of Spiders Questionnaire (FSQ) scores, we subdivided them into six “fearfuls” that had elevated FSQ scores, and 10 “non-fearfuls” that had no fear of spiders. The phobics successfully managed to complete the procedure and showed consistent avoidance behavior across all behavioral tasks. Compared to the non-fearfuls, which did not show any avoidance behavior at all, the phobics looked at the spider much more often and clearly directed their body toward it in the search task. In the approach task, they hesitated most when they were close to the spider, and their difficulty to touch the spider was reflected in a strong increase in right hand acceleration changes. The fearfuls showed avoidance behavior depending on the tasks: strongest in the search task and weakest in the approach task. Additionally, we identified subjective valence ratings of the spider as the main influence on both objective avoidance behavior and subjective well-being after exposure, mediating the effect of the FSQ. In summary, the behavioral tasks are well suited to assess avoidance behavior in phobic participants and provide detailed insights into the process of avoidance. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9094686/ /pubmed/35571283 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.827673 Text en Copyright © 2022 Binder, Pöhlchen, Zwanzger and Spoormaker. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience Binder, Florian P. Pöhlchen, Dorothee Zwanzger, Peter Spoormaker, Victor I. Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia |
title | Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia |
title_full | Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia |
title_fullStr | Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia |
title_full_unstemmed | Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia |
title_short | Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia |
title_sort | facing your fear in immersive virtual reality: avoidance behavior in specific phobia |
topic | Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9094686/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35571283 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.827673 |
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