Will avatars help children with social anxiety overcome fears?
June 15, 2012
Avatars play the roles of classmates, teachers and a principal. The children practice greetings, giving and receiving compliments, being assertive and asking and OKanswering questions. (Credit: Virtually Better Inc.)
A computer simulation program that enables children to interact with avatars to reduce social anxiety has been developed by the University of Central Florida Anxiety Disorders Clinic and the Atlanta-based company Virtually Better .
The simulation, designed for children ages 8 to 12, allows clinicians to play the roles of the avatars while the children sit at a computer in a different room and respond to situations they encounter routinely. The children practice greetings, giving and receiving compliments, being assertive and asking and answering questions.
The National Institute of Mental Health provided a $500,000 grant to fund the development of the software and a 12-week study that will begin this summer. The study will involve 30 Central Florida children ages 8 to 12.
The six characters and the varying levels of difficulty in the simulation allow clinicians to design scenarios appropriate for their patients. More challenging scenarios include dealing with a bully who is demanding that a child give up some of her lunch money.
If the initial trial goes well, researchers hope to conduct a yearlong trial with more children. If that is successful, the simulation could then become available to clinicians. The program eventually could be expanded to include other settings, such as playgrounds, and to serve other children who need help improving social skills.
Virtually Better, Inc., based in Decatur, Georgia, was founded in 1996 with the goal of creating virtual reality environments for use in the treatment of anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), fear of public speaking, fear of flying, and fear of heights. Its team of psychologists and technologists is dedicated to advancing the state of the art in behavioral healthcare.
Reality check: will learning to cope in a virtual world help, or lead to restricting patients to Facebook-type interaction and less coping in the real world? And why not open this software up to millions of people and lets us all try it — and improve it? — Ed.
Comments (5)
by Brendan Ryan
Teaching young people with anxiety disorders better social skills through avatars and computer programs that are intended to make them familiar with how to react to confict situations either at home or at school is interesting and perhaps best suited for more young students than just those diagnosed with anxiety-related disorders. Students using technology to better prepare themselves for predictable problem areas they may enounter in their ordinary lives is a safe and modern approach to embedding the right kinds of behavior in the impressionable young minds of the people engaged in this doing this experiment in Florida because it uses computers and avatars as likely effective means of helping students become comfortable with the idea of exercising prescribably better behaviors before they are expected to observe what they’ve learned, all this being accomplished and learned in a seperate environment created using technology with the hopes that they’ll enjoy what is being taught to them in a way that will probably last resulting when the students are expected to interact at school.
Brendan Ryan
The Brendan Ryan Company
Houston, Texas
by Dennis R.
Perhaps a better use of avatars would be to replace schools rather than simulate them. No judgments based on looks, clothing, physicality in addition to no fear of physical violence.
Maybe we need to start looking at schools as the problem instead of just the setting for some problems. Education doesn’t need to take place in classrooms. Peers aren’t your peers just because they were born in the same calendar or fiscal year.
by Editor
Dennis: agreed. Schools are a holdover from the middle ages, mostly incompetent and irrelevant, and this research is just putting a patch on this broken system. Khan Academy is leading the way.
by Mr.x
Sure. And how to make sure that everyone learns sth? How to make sure that it is xy behind the screen and not yx or some kind of “I-am-there-algorithm”? How can a potential employer be sure you know what he needs you to know? How to help children from troubled households blessed with parents who just don’t care to teach some basic social skills?Their only real-life role-models living in the same “troubled” neighborhood.What about the people who can’t afford regular internet access?What about people who want to learn only things which they like?How to enforce standards?Everyone learns at his own pace- who knows if someone is being lazy? Some of these problems may sort themselves out with the passage of time.
Most kinds of tests used in online education are utter crap because one can use efficent test-taking skills and do OK or even good without learning.
Furthermore online learning requires that someone wants to learn.I already can see the hordes of “nice people” resulting from the end schools.
Besides Khan Academy was not the first to offer online education for free.Schools for anyone are a product of the industrialization and not the middle ages- you know the stuff about diversification of labor.We learned that at school (ok, not really- depends on what you call learning) ;).
P.s: I hated school as much as anyone else, probably even more.
But remembering some of my “classmates”- I can’t imagine how “challenged” they would be without formal education.
I can see this kind of online education as a nice supplement to other means of self-education, which maybe becomes more valuable than now if the economy continues to change (it is most valuable for those who do not work for wages).
Have a nice day.
by Bri
A machine to teach humans social skills, ain’t that rich! Unfortunately it’s nessesary. We tend to be inhuman to people. Look at cyber bullying. After all Ray kurzwiel is just a nerdy version of Woody Allen. Bullying is insidious. I have trouble spelling because at that time period in my life, it was uncool to be a nerd. I was a nerd, so I changed myself to fit in. Both my parents had to work long hours, and so were not around to counter this development the financial pressures made them be estranged from each other. Now I get coerced by nerds that I can’t spell. What’s so funny bout peace love and understanding, whoa . Elvis Costello again, sorry. It’s sad that we don’t know what’s wrong or what to do, and that a machine is our savior. Remember the congressman who yelled out during Obamas speech, ” you lie” even though Obama wasn’t lying. It’s ingrained in us to be in humane to each other, it makes sense that we need something inhuman to make us civil again.