The VEPSY UPDATED Project: clinical rationale and technical approach.

More than 10 years ago, Tart (1990) described virtual reality (VR) as a technological model of consciousness offering intriguing possibilities for developing diagnostic, inductive, psychotherapeutic, and training techniques that can extend and supplement current ones. To exploit and understand this potential is the overall goal of the "Telemedicine and Portable Virtual Environment in Clinical Psychology"--VEPSY UPDATED--a European Community-funded research project (IST-2000-25323, www.cybertherapy.info). Particularly, its specific goal is the development of different PC-based virtual reality modules to be used in clinical assessment and treatment of social phobia, panic disorders, male sexual disorders, obesity, and eating disorders. The paper describes the clinical and technical rationale behind the clinical applications developed by the project. Moreover, the paper focuses its analysis on the possible role of VR in clinical psychology and how it can be used for therapeutic change.

Experiential cognitive therapy in the treatment of panic disorders with agoraphobia: a controlled study.

The use of a multicomponent cognitive-behavioral treatment strategy for panic disorder with agoraphobia is actually one of the preferred therapeutic approaches for this disturbance. This method involves a mixture of cognitive and behavioral techniques that are intended to help patients identify and modify their dysfunctional anxiety-related thoughts, beliefs and behavior. The paper presents a new treatment protocol for Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia, named Experiential-Cognitive Therapy (ECT) that integrates the use of virtual reality (VR) in a multicomponent cognitive-behavioral treatment strategy. The VR software used for the trial is freely downloadable: www.cyberpsychology.info/try.htm. Moreover, the paper presents the result of a controlled study involving 12 consecutive patients aged 35-53. The selected subjects were randomly divided in three groups: ECT group, that experienced the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-Virtual Reality assisted treatment (eight sessions), a CBT group that experienced the traditional Cognitive Behavioral approach (12 sessions) and a waiting list control group. The data showed that both CBT and ECT could significantly reduce the number of panic attacks, the level of depression and both state and trait anxiety. However, ECT procured these results using 33% fewer sessions than CBT. This datum suggests that ECT could be better than CBT in relation to the "cost of administration," justifying the added use of VR equipment in the treatment of panic disorders.

The VEPSY UPDATED project: technical and clinical rationale.

The emergence of new shared media, such as the Internet and virtual reality are changing the ways in which people relate, communicate, and live. Health care, and in particular clinical psychology, is one of the areas that could be most dramatically reshaped by these new technologies. To exploit and understand this potential is the overall goal of the "Telemedicine and Portable Virtual Environment in Clinical Psychology"--VEPSY UPDATED--an European Community funded research project (IST-2000-25323, http://www.vepsy.com) whose specific goal is the development of different PC based virtual reality modules to be used in clinical assessment and treatment. In particular the developed modules have been using to address the following pathologies: anxiety disorders; male impotence and premature ejaculation; obesity, bulimia and binge-eating disorders. The chapter details the general technical and clinical characteristics of the developed modules.

The VEPSY updated project: virtual reality in clinical psychology.

Many of us grew up with the naive assumption that couches are the best used therapeutic tools in psychotherapy. But tools for psychotherapy are evolving in a much more complex environment than a designer's chaise lounge. In particular, virtual reality (VR) devices have the potential for appearing soon in many consulting rooms. The use of VR in medicine is not a novelty. Applications of virtual environments for health care have been developed in the following areas: surgical procedures (remote surgery or telepresence, augmented or enhanced surgery, and planning and simulation of procedures before surgery); preventive medicine and patient education; medical education and training; visualization of massive medical databases; and architectural design for health care facilities. However, there is a growing recognition that VR can play an important role in clinical psychology, too. To exploit and understand this potential is the main goal of the Telemedicine and Portable Virtual Environment in Clinical Psychology--VEPSY Updated--a European Community-funded research project (IST-2000-25323, http://www.vepsy.com). The project will provide innovative tools-telemedicine and portable-for the treatment of patients, clinical trials to verify their viability, and action plans for dissemination of its results to an extended audience-potential users and influential groups. The project will also develop different personal computer (PC)-based virtual reality modules to be used in clinical assessment and treatment. In particular, the developed modules will address the following pathologies: anxiety disorders; male impotence and premature ejaculation; and obesity, bulimia, and binge-eating disorders.

Accessing source information in analogical problem-solving.

Several studies showed that people presented with source information fail to apply it to an analogous target problem unless they are instructed to use the source. Seven experiments were carried out to assess whether such a lack of spontaneous transfer occurs because individuals do not activate the source during the target task or because they do not realize the source-target relationship. Experiment 1 compared a condition in which the source was activated with no cue about the source-target connection to conditions in which subjects were informed about this connection. Results suggested that the lack of spontaneous transfer does not depend on failure in activating source information. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 were devised to falsify this finding by activating the source closer and closer to the target and by focusing participants' attention toward the relevant aspects of the source. Experiments 5, 6, and 7 were aimed at stressing source-target correspondences by introducing surface similarities. All experiments showed that the mere activation of the source does not facilitate analogical transfer. Results suggested that two processes should be distinguished in the access phase of analogical problem-solving: Source retrieval and identification of the source-target connection.

Irony as a game of implicitness: acoustic profiles of ironic communication.

Irony, as "quotation" and "fencing game," consists of an interactive script, grounded on a focal event "trigger," in which the dialogic comment shows the ironist's intention through an antiphrastic process and syncoding to "hit" the victim of the irony (blame by praise or praise by blame). Through acoustic analysis of the suprasegmental profiles of standard phrases inserted into inductors expressly composed and read by 50 naive subjects, the presence and nature of significant differences between sarcastic and kind irony in low- and high-context utterances (contextualization effect--Experiments 1 and 2) have been verified. It has also been observed that, where more "specific weight" is given to the linguistic stream (corrective irony hypothesis), a markedness of suprasegmental features emerges (correctivity effect--Experiment 3). Finally, comparison between sarcastic irony and blame and between kind irony and praise shows that there exists a precise manner of contrastive syncoding, whereby the voices of irony do not coincide with those of direct blame or praise, but assume a specific caricature and emphatic profile (contrastivity effect--Experiment 4).