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CHAPTER 8
Conclusion
In the past decade, VR has proven to be an efficient tool to be used in the treatment of
phobias. Many studies have demonstrated its efficacy for many phobias such as acrophobia,
arachnophobia and fear of flights. In this thesis, we have focused on the development of
various applications to be used in the treatment of social phobia as well as tools to diagnose
and assess them. More specifically, we have worked on tools to be used in the treatment of
fear of public speaking and agoraphobia with crowds.
8.1 Contributions
Our contributions can be divided into three major sections: gaze interaction in the context
of social phobia treatment, gaze attention behaviors for crowds, and gaze interaction in the
context of agoraphobia treatment.
8.1.1 Gaze Interaction for Social Phobia
Our first main contribution resides in the development of an application allowing interaction
between a user and a virtual character in the context of social phobia. This application
allows the determination of how a virtual character should behave using user eye-tracking
data. We allow for characters to respond to the user’s eye contact behavior. The character
thus seems interested and attentive when being looked at, and distracted when being avoided
by eye contact. A phobic person doing a public speaking exercise may thus induce a positive
feedback loop when gazing at the virtual character.
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