The development of the virtual reality system for the treatment of the fears of public speaking

The fear of public speaking is a kind of social phobias. The patients having the fear of public speaking show some symptoms like shame and timidity in the daily personal relationship. They are afraid that the other person would be puzzled, feel insulted, and they also fear that they should be underestimated for their mistakes. For the treatment of the fear of public speaking, the cognitive-behavioral therapy has been generally used. The cognitive-behavioral therapy is the method that makes the patients gradually experience some situations inducing the fears and overcome those at last. Recently, the virtual reality technology has been introduced as an alternative method for providing phobic situations. In this study, we developed the public speaking simulator and the virtual environments for the treatment of the fear of public speaking. The head-mounted display, the head-tracker and the 3 dimensional sound system were used for the immersive virtual environment. The imagery of the virtual environment consists of a seminar room and 8 virtual audiences. The patient will speak in front of these virtual audiences and the therapist can control motions, facial expressions, sounds, and voices of each virtual audience.