Presence, Cybersickness, Anxiety, and Heart Rate Variability in a Non-Clinical Population Using Virtual Reality Environments Designed For Specific Phobias' Treatment

The current study was performed to assess the phenomenon known as Presence, to measure Anxiety responses, simulator sickness and autonomic activation in subjects of the general population. The sample consisted in 37 Argentine participants (15 male, 22 female) between ages 20 and 40; who were exposed to 3 virtual environments designed to research and treat phobias. Instruments utilized for this study were the Symptom Checklist 90-R, Acrophobia Questionnaire, Fear of Spiders Questionnaire, The Claustrophobia Questionnaire, Igroup Presence Questionnaire, Simulator Sickness Questionnaire and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. All virtual environments generated sufficient feeling of presence. Cybersickness was only registered in the Elevator scenario. The Apartment and Spiders environments have shown not to be anxiety triggers within this population. As for Elevator, a significant increase in the level of state anxiety was generated. A possible hypothesis to account for this fact might be that reported anxiety responds to movement simulated in the virtual scenario while on the other two scenarios the subjects remained static. The existence of a correlation between HRV and state anxiety has been analyzed and no significant relation has been found between the variables. Even though there is a relation between anxiety and presence, no significant relation has been found between anxiety and presence. Regarding sensory conflict, a follow up study in the Elevator environment should be done, eliminating movement and exposing subjects to the stimuli while static at different heights. Future studies should consider broadening the size of the sample and studying clinical population to compare results.