11 . Patient - Therapist Communication in Computer Assisted Environment

Getting involved in a virtual environment (VE) cannot be only considered a plain process of attention shifting, but it must be regarded as well as a crucial event able to distinguish the actors’ communication in a peculiar way. A study is presented herein in order to describe patients’ communicative style in a psychological treatment supported by Virtual Reality (VR). In particular, we proposed to understand some basic mechanisms through which VR may be considered as a communicative tool in a therapeutic interaction. To verify the features of patients’ communication during VR, the present chapter analyzes whether there are significant differences in non-verbal communicative style of the patients before and after VR exposure. By means of such analysis it should be possible to discover the cognitive and emotional patterns that influence the non-verbal communication adopted by the patients. To reach this goal, we analyse how patients used a number of non-verbal indexes while interacting with the therapist before and after VR exposure. Participants in the present study were 12 women affected by Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia (PDA). Implications of the present findings to the contribution of VR assisted protocol to the study of patient-therapist communication are discussed.