Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Chair of Media Informatics, University of Regensburg, Germany.
Clin Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2024 Jul;29(3):1121-1136. doi: 10.1177/13591045231194103. Epub 2023 Aug 18.
Many children around the globe suffer from spider phobia. Virtual reality exposure therapy is an effective phobia treatment, but so far predominantly tailored for adults. A gamified approach utilizing gaze interaction would allow for a more child-friendly and engaging experience, and provide the possibility to foster working mechanisms of exposure therapy. We developed an application in which children make spiders change in positively connoted ways (e.g., make them dance or shrink) if sufficient visual attention towards them is captured via eye tracking. Thereby, motivation for and positive affects during exposure towards spiders are aspired. In this pilot study on 21 children without ( = 11) and with fear of spiders ( = 10), we examined positive and negative affect during exposure to a virtual spider and to different gaze-related transformations of the spider within a quasi-experimental design. Within a one-group design, we additionally examined fear of spiders in spider fearful children before and one week after the intervention. We found that significantly more positive than negative affect was induced by the spiders' transformations in children without and with fear of spiders. Fear of spiders was furthermore significantly reduced in spider-fearful children, showing large effect sizes ( > .80). Findings indicate eligibility for future clinical use and evaluation in children with spider phobia.
全球许多儿童患有蜘蛛恐惧症。虚拟现实暴露疗法是一种有效的恐惧症治疗方法，但迄今为止主要针对成年人。利用注视互动的游戏化方法可以提供更适合儿童的和吸引人的体验，并提供培养暴露治疗工作机制的可能性。我们开发了一种应用程序，如果通过眼动追踪足够地捕捉到对蜘蛛的视觉注意力，儿童可以使蜘蛛以积极的方式（例如，使它们跳舞或缩小）发生变化。从而激发对蜘蛛暴露的动机和积极影响。在这项对 21 名无蜘蛛恐惧症的儿童（= 11）和有蜘蛛恐惧症的儿童（= 10）的初步研究中，我们在准实验设计中检查了暴露于虚拟蜘蛛和蜘蛛的不同注视相关变形时的积极和消极影响。在一项单组设计中，我们还在干预前和干预后一周检查了有蜘蛛恐惧症的儿童的蜘蛛恐惧症。我们发现，对于无蜘蛛恐惧症和有蜘蛛恐惧症的儿童，蜘蛛的变形会引起明显更多的积极影响而非消极影响。此外，蜘蛛恐惧症在有蜘蛛恐惧症的儿童中显著降低，显示出较大的效应量（>.80）。研究结果表明，该方法有资格在患有蜘蛛恐惧症的儿童中进行未来的临床使用和评估。
