Baus Oliver, Bouchard Stéphane
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa , Ottawa, ON , Canada.
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa , Ottawa, ON , Canada ; Department of Psychoeducation and Psychology, Université du Québec en Outaouais , Gatineau, QC , Canada.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Mar 4;8:112. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00112. eCollection 2014.
This paper reviews the move from virtual reality exposure-based therapy to augmented reality exposure-based therapy (ARET). Unlike virtual reality (VR), which entails a complete virtual environment (VE), augmented reality (AR) limits itself to producing certain virtual elements to then merge them into the view of the physical world. Although, the general public may only have become aware of AR in the last few years, AR type applications have been around since beginning of the twentieth century. Since, then, technological developments have enabled an ever increasing level of seamless integration of virtual and physical elements into one view. Like VR, AR allows the exposure to stimuli which, due to various reasons, may not be suitable for real-life scenarios. As such, AR has proven itself to be a medium through which individuals suffering from specific phobia can be exposed "safely" to the object(s) of their fear, without the costs associated with programing complete VEs. Thus, ARET can offer an efficacious alternative to some less advantageous exposure-based therapies. Above and beyond presenting what has been accomplished in ARET, this paper covers some less well-known aspects of the history of AR, raises some ARET related issues, and proposes potential avenues to be followed. These include the type of measures to be used to qualify the user's experience in an augmented reality environment, the exclusion of certain AR-type functionalities from the definition of AR, as well as the potential use of ARET to treat non-small animal phobias, such as social phobia.
本文回顾了从虚拟现实暴露疗法到增强现实暴露疗法（ARET）的转变。与虚拟现实（VR）不同，虚拟现实需要一个完整的虚拟环境（VE），而增强现实（AR）则仅限于生成某些虚拟元素，然后将它们融入物理世界的视图中。尽管普通大众可能只是在过去几年才开始了解AR，但自20世纪初以来，AR类型的应用就已经存在了。从那时起，技术的发展使得虚拟和物理元素能够越来越无缝地整合到一个视图中。与VR一样，AR允许暴露于由于各种原因可能不适合现实生活场景的刺激物。因此，AR已证明自己是一种媒介，通过它患有特定恐惧症的个体可以“安全地”暴露于他们恐惧的对象，而无需承担编写完整虚拟环境的成本。因此，ARET可以为一些不太有利的暴露疗法提供一种有效的替代方案。除了介绍ARET已经取得的成果外，本文还涵盖了AR历史中一些不太为人所知的方面，提出了一些与ARET相关的问题，并提出了可能要遵循的潜在途径。这些包括用于在增强现实环境中量化用户体验的措施类型，从AR的定义中排除某些AR类型的功能，以及ARET在治疗非小动物恐惧症（如社交恐惧症）方面的潜在用途。
