“When I saw that, I slowed down and then stopped what I was saying,” said the speaker, a 47-year-old public servant named Gary, who last year took part in an unusual study of social anxiety treatment at the University of Quebec.
The anxiety rose in his throat—What if I’m not making sense? What if I’m asked questions I can’t answer?— but subsided as his therapist, observing in the background, reminded him that the audience’s reaction might have nothing to do with him. And if a question stumped him, he could just say so: no one knows everything.
He relaxed and finished the talk, and the audience seemed to settle down. Then he removed a headset that had helped create an illusion that the audience was actually there, not just figures on a screen.“I just think it’s a fantastic idea to be able to experience situations where you know that the worst cannot happen,” he said.“You know that it’s controlled and gradual and yet feels somehow real.”
For more than a decade, a handful of therapists have been using virtual environments to help people to work throughphobias, like a fear of heights or of public spaces. But now advances in artificial intelligence and computer modeling are allowing them to take on a wider array of complex social challenges and to gain insight into how people are affected by interactions with virtual humans— or by inhabiting avatars of themselves.
Researchers are populating digital worlds with autonomous, virtual humans that can evoke the same tensions as in real-life encounters. People with social anxiety are struck dumb when asked questions by a virtual stranger. Heavy drinkers feel strong urges to order something from a virtual bartender, while gamblers are drawn to sit down and join a group playing on virtual slot machines. And therapists can advise patients at the very moment those sensations are felt.
In a series of experiments, researchers have shown that people internalize these virtual experiences and their responses to them— with effects that carry over into real life.
The emerging field, called cybertherapy, now hasannual conferencesand a growing international following of therapists, researchers and others interested improving behavior through the use of simulations. The Canadian military has invested heavily in virtual-reality research; so has theUnited States Army, which has been spending about $4 million annually on programs with computer-generated agents, for training officers and treating post-traumatic stress reactions.
The trend has already generated a few critics, who see a possible downside along with benefits.
“Even if this approach works, there will be side effects that we can’t anticipate,” said Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and author of“You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto” (Knopf, 2010).“And in some scenarios I would worry about defining humans down: defining what’s normal based on what we can model in virtual environments.”
But most researchers say that virtual therapy is, and will remain, no more than a therapist’s tool, to be used only when it appears effective.“There’s a real and understandable distrust of technology as a shortcut for good clinical skills,” said Albert Rizzo, a psychologist at theUniversity of Southern California,“but I think, deep down, most therapists will want any tool that can help them do their work, and they’ll be open to using virtual approaches.”
Virtual Humans, Real Therapy
“My abilities are somewhat limited,” says a female voice.“For example, I can speak and listen to what you say, but I can’t do anyphysical activity.”
In an office at theInstitute for Creative Technologiesat the University of Southern California, a virtual woman named Angelina is addressing a college student from a computer screen.
Angelina looks to be about 30 or so, a pretty, athletic figure with an open, intelligent face framed by short black hair. Her eyes and expression, guided by video cameras and microphones, stay in sync with the student’s, as an empathetic therapist’s would.“What are some of the things you hate about yourself?” asks the voice.
The student stalls for a moment.“Well,” she says, ina video of the exchange,“I don’t like that I can be really quiet in social situations. Sometimes people take that as me being rude, but it’s just me being quiet.”
Angelina nods sympathetically and then asks another question, about what the student fears most.
Interacting with a virtual human programmed to be socially sensitive in this way is oddly liberating. The figures are clearly not human; some are balky with language, others mute. Many have a two-dimensional graphic-arts quality.
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