Human-Computer Interaction and Presence in Virtual Reality

Chapter 3
and the ceiling and the floor were darker, with wooden textures to give a sensation of greater
enclosure. Once the door was closed, the patient could lock it. There was also a wall that
could move at the patient’s will making a loud noise with four possibilities for advancing
toward the patient leaving her locked up in a space of one square meter. Patient anxiety and
avoidance-behavior was measured using several scales, each of which decreased during
therapy and were maintained at follow-up. Interestingly, the patient reported several times
that “the wall produces even more fear in me than the CTS does”, suggesting that virtual
experiences can be made to be even more frightening than real ones.
3.1.7 Conclusions
At this moment VR exposure therapy can still be said to be in an experimental phase.
Research, mostly in the form of case studies, has been focused solely on the effectiveness of
VRET. In the development of VRET, it has become clear that it can be regarded as a
substitute for exposure in vivo. Patients are exposed to the stimuli they fear and this helps in
reducing the phobia.
Currently, VR is used solely during the exposure itself. For phobias, no research has yet been
performed into using VR as for instance a diagnosis tool, in contrast with other mental
disorders such as ADHD (Rizzo et al., 2000).
3.2 Current Task Analysis methods
When creating a model of a situation for the sake of system design, the analysis is usually
performed using a pre-described method. This gives some assurance that all relevant aspects
will be captured, and that the result of the analysis, the model, does not include too much
irrelevant information.
In the early days, modeling in system design was focused on describing the way the system
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Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Pragmatics
Semantics
Knowledge
User(s)
Computer(s)
Cognitions
Syntax
Lexicon
User Interface
Goals
Tasks Domain
Media
Objects
Objects
Figure 3.2: Overview of the Task Analysis domain