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6.2. Clinical Study on VRET for Social Phobia
the top row of Figure 6.7. In the auditorium scene, we can also see that the talking virtual
characters, the lady in red and the man with the white sweatshirt in the front row, were
equally looked at much more after treatment than before treatment. This is depicted in the
bottom row of Figure 6.7. Here as well, there was a noticeable decrease in avoidance of eye
contact with the interlocutors. On the whole, the eye-tracking results tend to show that eye
contact avoidance has diminished after treatment and that looking at the talking person’s face
has become less difficult for most subjects.
6.2.5 Discussion
Efficacy of VRET. First, we have noticed a general improvement for most subjects after
having analyzed all questionnaires. We have equally noticed that the tendencies for each
subject were the same over the questionnaires. However, we have seen, in our results, that
one of the subjects apparently was not affected by the treatment at all. This leads us to
think that certain people are more reactive to VRET than others. Moreover, our therapist
collaborator believed that this particular subject rejected VRET due to a different cultural
background. This, however, is only a hypothesis and cannot be corroborated by any data. A
different study would need to be conducted in order to verify it.
Validation of VR as therapeutic tool. Due to the limited size of our sample, we cannot
conclude to the validation of VR as a treatment for social phobia. Indeed, statistical significance
requires a minimum of 30 subjects. Moreover, our study cannot prove the efficacy
of VRET since we did not have a control group (following therapy without VR) or a waiting
list. Nevertheless, our results support previous studies in the domain and show that it
could be a promising therapeutic tool. More extensive experimentation on a larger cohort
and with various groups (therapy without VR and waiting list) would enforce the efficacy of
such treatments.
Positioning in relation to previous work. As mentioned in Chapter 2.1.1, many studies
have been conducted on the evaluation of the potential of VRET to treat social phobia and
concluded to the validity of VRET as therapeutic tool. The results we have obtained support
those conclusions. Our main contribution though, is to bring in the use of eye-tracking in
order to assess and evaluate eye contact behavior progress. Preliminary studies and literature
have shown eye contact to be an important factor of social phobia. Our idea in this study was
thus to confirm this within a known therapeutic program, and in this sense, we have obtained
promising results.
Use of eye-tracking as diagnosis and assessment tool. We have observed different gaze behaviors
during VR exposure and have obtained a qualitative appreciation of the patients’ gaze
avoidance behaviors. After having analyzed the eye-tracking recordings, we have equally noticed
an improvement in eye contact behaviors once the therapy was over. This has lead us
to think that eye-tracking could be a useful tool in the assessment and diagnosis of eye contact
avoidance in people suffering from social phobia. The next experiment presented in this
chapter discusses this in detail.
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