Biomedical subjects

R M Baños

Publications and source records attributed to R M Baños.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Mixing realities? An application of augmented reality for the treatment of cockroach phobia.

Augmented reality (AR) refers to the introduction of virtual elements in the real world. That is, the person is seeing an image composed of a visualization of the real world, and a series of virtual elements that, at that same moment, are super-imposed on the real world. The most important aspect of AR is that the virtual elements supply to the person relevant and useful information that is not contained in the real world. AR has notable potential, and has already been used in diverse fields, such as medicine, the army, coaching, engineering, design, and robotics. Until now, AR has never been used in the scope of psychological treatment. Nevertheless, AR presents various advantages. Just like in the classical systems of virtual reality, it is possible to have total control over the virtual elements that are super-imposed on the real world, and how one interacts with those elements. AR could involve additional advantages; on one side it could be less expensive since it also uses the real world (this does not need to be modeled), and it could facilitate the feeling of presence (the sensation of being there), and reality judgment (the fact of judging the experience as real) of the person since the environment he or she is in, and what he or she is seeing is, in fact the "reality." In this paper, we present the data of the first case study in which AR has been used for the treatment of a specific phobia, cockroaches phobia. It addresses a system of AR that permits exposure to virtual cockroaches super-imposed on the real world. In order to carry out the exposure, the guidelines of Ost with respect to "one-session treatment" were followed. The results are promising. The participant demonstrated notable fear and avoidance in the behavioral avoidance test before the treatment, and not only was an important decrease in the scores of fear and avoidance observed after the treatment, but also the participant was capable of approaching, interacting, and killing live cockroaches immediately following the treatment. The results are maintained in a follow-up conducted 1 month after the termination of the treatment.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Immersion and emotion: their impact on the sense of presence.

The present study is designed to test the role of immersion and media content in the sense of presence. Specifically, we are interested in the affective valence of the virtual environments. This paper describes an experiment that compares three immersive systems (a PC monitor, a rear projected video wall, and a head-mounted display) and two virtual environments, one involving emotional content and the other not. The purpose of the experiment was to test the interactive role of these two media characteristics (form and content). Scores on two self-report presence measurements were compared among six groups of 10 people each. The results suggest that both immersion and affective content have an impact on presence. However, immersion was more relevant for non-emotional environments than for emotional ones.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2001

Explicit and implicit memory biases in depression and panic disorder.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the presence of a bias for emotional information (panic-related, depression-related, positive and neutral) in explicit memory and implicit memory (by means of free recall and word-stem completion tasks, respectively) among depressed (N=20) and panic (N=20) patients. Three different encoding conditions (graphemic, semantic and self-reference) were used. The results of this study failed to show the existence of a mood-congruent memory bias for both implicit and explicit memory in these emotional disorders. According to the correlational analyses performed, differences among categories of emotional words meant less than the difference among various types of encoding and memory bias in order to differentiate among groups.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Psychometric characteristics in normal and social phobic samples for a Spanish version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale.

The present paper had three purposes: (a) presenting normative data for the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale in a Spanish sample, (b) studying whether there are significant sex or age differences in self-esteem, and (c) studying whether there are significant differences between a Control group with no psychological diagnosis and a group of social phobics. Of the total sample of 266 persons, 214 belonged to the Control group and 52 to the Social Phobic group. Item-total score correlations and alpha reliabilities supported the internal consistency of the scale. There were statistically significant differences between the Control and Social Phobic groups, but not by sex or age.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1998

Virtual reality treatment of claustrophobia: a case report.

The efficacy of a treatment for claustrophobia using only Virtual Reality (VR) exposure was examined. The subject was a 43-year-old female who suffered from clinically significant distress and impairment and sought psychological therapy. Eight individual VR graded exposure sessions were conducted. All self-report measures were reduced following VR exposure and were maintained at one month follow-up. The necessity of a theoretical framework for this new medium for exposure therapy is discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Virtual reality: a new clinical setting lab.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a new technology halfway between television and computer. It constitutes another step in the evolution of our use of a tool that allows us to see, to hear and to feel in a world created graphically in three dimensions, and to interact with it. VR is, mainly, a mental experience which makes the user believe that "he is there", that he is present in the virtual world. With this new tool, the user is no longer a mere observer of that which is happening on a screen, but he "feels" that he is immersed in that world and participates in it, in spite of the fact that they are spaces and objects that only exist in the memory of the computer and in the user's mind. This chapter seeks to carry out different reflections at different levels. First, we will analyze the relationships between VR and Psychology, one of the disciplines that has made more efforts in order to understand how we obtain knowledge from the world and from ourselves. We will also analyze the impact VR can have in one of the applied disciplines of Psychology, which is Clinical Psychology. With regard to this application environment, VR becomes a tool which can generate useful models for Psychology (both normal and abnormal), and it is offered as a research context for Clinical Psychology; as a "realistic" laboratory where we can study behaviours, emotions, thoughts, etc.; and a new means to develop psychological treatments.

Computer Simulation↗

PubMed1990

Self-consciousness Scale: a study of Spanish housewives.

The purpose of this study was to examine the applicability with 93 Spanish housewives of the translated Self-consciousness Scale. We present reliability measures and normative data, and we also include data for two clinical samples (31 depressive and 31 asthmatic women patients).

Adult↗