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Main Authors: Mahmoudi-Nejad, Athar, Guzdial, Matthew, Boulanger, Pierre
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.17406
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author Mahmoudi-Nejad, Athar
Guzdial, Matthew
Boulanger, Pierre
author_facet Mahmoudi-Nejad, Athar
Guzdial, Matthew
Boulanger, Pierre
contents The need to generate a spider to provoke a desired anxiety response arises in the context of personalized virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET), a treatment approach for arachnophobia. This treatment involves patients observing virtual spiders in order to become desensitized and decrease their phobia, which requires that the spiders elicit specific anxiety responses. However, VRET approaches tend to require therapists to hand-select the appropriate spider for each patient, which is a time-consuming process and takes significant technical knowledge and patient insight. While automated methods exist, they tend to employ rules-based approaches with minimal ability to adapt to specific users. To address these challenges, we present a framework for VRET utilizing procedural content generation (PCG) and reinforcement learning (RL), which automatically adapts a spider to elicit a desired anxiety response. We demonstrate the superior performance of this system compared to a more common rules-based VRET method.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_17406
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spiders Based on Anxiety: How Reinforcement Learning Can Deliver Desired User Experience in Virtual Reality Personalized Arachnophobia Treatment
Mahmoudi-Nejad, Athar
Guzdial, Matthew
Boulanger, Pierre
Machine Learning
Human-Computer Interaction
The need to generate a spider to provoke a desired anxiety response arises in the context of personalized virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET), a treatment approach for arachnophobia. This treatment involves patients observing virtual spiders in order to become desensitized and decrease their phobia, which requires that the spiders elicit specific anxiety responses. However, VRET approaches tend to require therapists to hand-select the appropriate spider for each patient, which is a time-consuming process and takes significant technical knowledge and patient insight. While automated methods exist, they tend to employ rules-based approaches with minimal ability to adapt to specific users. To address these challenges, we present a framework for VRET utilizing procedural content generation (PCG) and reinforcement learning (RL), which automatically adapts a spider to elicit a desired anxiety response. We demonstrate the superior performance of this system compared to a more common rules-based VRET method.
title Spiders Based on Anxiety: How Reinforcement Learning Can Deliver Desired User Experience in Virtual Reality Personalized Arachnophobia Treatment
topic Machine Learning
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.17406