• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.615-621
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• 2000

A social phobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by extreme fear and phobic avoidance of social and performance situations. Medications or cognitive-behavior methods have been mainly used in treating it. These methods have some shortcomings such as being inefficient and difficult to apply to treatment. Lately the virtual rcality technology has been applied to dcal with the anxiety disorders in order to compcnsate for these defects. A virtual environment provides a patient with stimuli which cvokes a phobia. and the patient's exposure to the virtual phobic situation make him be able to overcome it. In this study, we suggested the public speaking simulator based on a personal computer for the treatment of social phobia. The public speaking simulator was composed of a position sensor. head mount display and audio system. And a virtual environment for the treatment was suggested to be a seminar room where 8 avatars are sitting. The virtual environment includes a tracking system the trace a participant's head-movement using a HMD with position sensor and 3D sound is added to the virtual environment so that he might fcel it realistic. We also made avatars' motion and facial expression change in reaction to a participant's speech. The goal of developing public speaking simulator is to apply to treat fear of public speaking efficiently and economically. In a future study. we should get more information about immergence and treatment efficiency by clinical test and apply it to this simulator.