A Stress-Aware Audience for Public Speaking Training
Virtual audiences have been used in psychotherapy for the treatment of public speaking anxiety, and recent studies show promising results with patients undergoing cognitive-behavior therapy with virtual reality exposure maintaining a reduction in their anxiety disorder for a year after treatment. It has been shown virtual exhibiting positive or negative behavior trigger different stress responses, however research on the topic of the effect of virtual audience behaviors has been scarce. In particular, it is unclear how variations in audience behavior can make the user’s stress levels vary while they are presenting. In this paper, we present a study where we intend to investigate the relationship between virtual audience behaviors and physiological measurements of stress. We use the Cicero virtual audience framework which allows for precise manipulation of its perceived level of arousal and valence by incremental changes in individual audience members behaviors. Additionally, we introduce a concept of a stress-aware virtual audience for public speaking training, which uses physiological assessments and virtual audience stimuli to maintain the user in a challenging, non-threatening state.