Fear and Anxiety in Virtual Reality : Investigations of cue and context conditioning in virtual environment

Virtual realities provide an outstanding tool in anxiety research.

A fear conditioning study investigates and illustrates the development of anxiety disorders in humans.

Hannah Genheimer describes the scientific background of fear and anxiety and presents an empirical study in a highly controlled virtual environment.

Psychophysiological as well as subjective data on the participants’ fear and anxiety clearly show contextual fear conditioning.

Cue conditioning in the light of one-trial learning is discussed.

The results emphasize the promising application of virtual environments in psychotherapy.