Poeschl Sandra, Doering Nicola
Ilmenau University of Technology.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2012;181:218-22.
Virtual Reality technology offers great possibilities for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy of fear of public speaking: Clients can be exposed to virtual fear-triggering stimuli (exposure) and are able to role-play in virtual environments, training social skills to overcome their fear. Usually, prototypical audience behavior (neutral, social and anti-social) serves as stimulus in virtual training sessions, although there is significant lack of theoretical basis on typical audience behavior. The study presented deals with the design of a realistic virtual presentation scenario. An audience (consisting of n=18 men and women) in an undergraduate seminar was observed during three frontal lecture sessions. Behavior frequency of four nonverbal dimensions (eye contact, facial expression, gesture, and posture) was rated by means of a quantitative content analysis. Results show audience behavior patterns which seem to be typical in frontal lecture contexts, like friendly and neutral face expressions. Additionally, combined and even synchronized behavioral patterns between participants who sit next to each other (like turning to the neighbor and start talking) were registered. The gathered data serve as empirical design basis for a virtual audience to be used in virtual training applications that stimulate the experiences of the participants in a realistic manner, thereby improving the experienced presence in the training application.
客户可以接触到引发恐惧的虚拟刺激（暴露疗法），并能够在虚拟环境中进行角色扮演，训练社交技能以克服恐惧。通常，原型观众行为（中性、社交和反社会）在虚拟训练课程中用作刺激，但关于典型观众行为的理论基础严重不足。本文介绍的研究涉及设计一个逼真的虚拟演讲场景。在本科研讨课的三场正面讲座中观察了一个由18名男女组成的观众群体。通过定量内容分析对四个非语言维度（眼神交流、面部表情、手势和姿势）的行为频率进行了评分。结果显示了在正面讲座情境中似乎典型的观众行为模式，如友好和中性的面部表情。此外，还记录了相邻参与者之间的组合甚至同步行为模式（如转向邻座并开始交谈）。所收集的数据为虚拟观众提供了实证设计依据，该虚拟观众可用于虚拟训练应用中，以逼真的方式刺激参与者的体验，从而提高训练应用中的沉浸感。
