Coronavirus: introduction of the application of augmented reality to help children with disorders to overcome the phobia of contamination facing an indefinite end of the pandemic

Abstract

Augmented reality has been increasingly used as a therapeutic tool in psychiatry. In particular, augmented reality exposure therapy (ARET) has been developed from and proposed as an alternative to standard cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for the treatment of phobic disorders. Using real-time 3D model and visual displays, the child is immersed in different computer-generated virtual environments designed for different types of phobia. As imaginative or in vivo exposure therapy, ARET consists in a gradual presentation of phobic stimuli. The desensitization through ARET has been found to be efficient in different types of anxiety disorder, and in particular in phobic disorders. The endeavor of this work is to examine researches done in the field of AR applied to children With Disorders. Thus, we will try to verify whether the use of these techniques makes useful or not an intervention in the case of children with disorder. The work presented aims at a reflection on the introduction of the use of AR in the treatment of these children by means of current researches. We will also observe, throughout this work, the involvement of NICTs such as augmented reality in changing the activities made with these tools on the didactic and methodological level.