Facing Your Fear in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avoidance Behavior in Specific Phobia.

ABSTRACT: Specific phobias are the most common anxiety disorder and are characterized by avoidance behavior. Avoidance behavior impacts daily function and is proposed to impair extinction learning. However, despite its prevalence, its objective assessment remains a challenge. To this end, we developed a fully automated experimental procedure using immersive virtual reality. The procedure contained a behavioral search, forced-choice, and an approach task with varying degrees of freedom and task relevance of the stimuli. In this study, we examined the sensitivity and feasibility of these tasks to assess avoidance behavior in patients with specific phobia. We adapted the tasks by replacing the originally conditioned stimuli with a spider and a neutral animal and investigated 31 female participants comp

SUBMITTER: Binder FP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9094686 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature