Virtual reality exposure therapy in the treatment of driving phobia

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Driving Phobia Disorder (2): System Refinement and Verification

Driving phobia is a widespread anxiety disorder in modern society. Driving phobia disorders often cause difficulties in people’s professional and social activities. A growing trend for treating driving phobia is to apply virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET). We refined the system’s performance based on the previous research publication and have conducted a VRET pre-test research study with treatment and control group subjects to demonstrate the effectiveness of VRET. Some systemic problems were discovered in the first published experiment. For example, the experimental process and the virtual reality (VR) driving scenarios had to be modified to reflect realistic scenarios causing the fear of driving. These issues were identified and improvements made and verified in this research. A total of 130 subjects completed the driving behavior survey. Thirty subjects were randomly drawn from the subjects with high driving fear questionnaire scores and were invited to participate in the treatment experiments. The latest research presents the refined VRET for driving phobia disorders, including the revised system framework, the main modules and integration, and the subjects’ biodata collection, management, and analysis. The experiment results provide strong evidence that the refined VRET design helps subjects overcome driving phobias. The subjects’ subjective distress and fear of driving are reduced significantly through the implementation of VRET.

Exploring the Participant-Related Determinants of Simulator Sickness in a Physical Motion Car Rollover Simulation as Measured by the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire

Physical motion driving simulators serve as a valuable research and training tool. Since many simulator participants suffer from simulator sickness (SS), we aimed to gain a better understanding of participant-related variables that may influence its incidence and severity. The study involved a 2-min mobile-platform car rollover simulation conducted in a group of 100 healthy adult participants. SS was measured with the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire immediately before and after the simulation. We investigated how the symptomatology of SS varies with gender, as well as with participants’ previous experiences such as extra driving training or car accidents. Although many SS symptoms occurred already before the simulation, all the symptoms except burping had a significantly greater incidence and severity after the simulation. Before the simulation, men reported disorientation symptoms more often than women, while participants with prior experiences of extra driving training or car accidents scored significantly higher in three out of four Questionnaire components: nausea symptoms, oculomotor symptoms, and the total score. The study offers interesting insights into associations between SS and prior experiences observed by means of high-fidelity real-motion simulations. More research is needed to determine the nature of these associations and their potential usefulness, for example, in helping accident survivors to cope with the distressing or even potentially disabling psychological consequences of accidents.

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Driving Phobia Disorder: System Design and Development

Driving phobia is an anxiety disorder. People are greatly impaired in their daily lives when suffering from driving phobia disorders. The anxieties can be triggered under various conditions, such as driving over bridges, driving at high speeds, or driving in close proximity to large trucks. Traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy are the most common approaches used in the treatment of psychological disorders, such as anxiety disorder (AD) and panic disorder (PD). This research focuses on virtual reality (VR)-based exposure therapy, called VRET, and describes the design and development of a system which uses alternating levels of fear-based driving scenarios that can be recorded and automatically adjusted to maximize exposure effectiveness without causing the subjects to panic. The proposed VRET integrates an advanced feedback database module for tracing and analyzing the system, along with the user’s bio-data to show the valid data collection of the system and its effectiveness for future use in clinical trials. The research conducts a system’s pre-test analysis using 31 subjects to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system. This research demonstrates the systematic development of the VRET for driving phobia disorder by depicting the system framework, key system modules, system integration, bio-database management, and pre-test data analysis to support our next research efforts in hospital-based clinical trials and for additional VRET development applications for clinical psychology.