Development and testing of a cognitive-behavioral therapy-based virtual reality support program for test anxiety

Virtual reality is a technology that can be used in the treatment of many mental health problems such as specific phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, and even psychosis. In the majority of virtual reality treatments, virtual reality provides a virtual exposure environment in the use of clinicians. The number of self-guided virtual reality applications that do not need the help of the clinician is limited. As for exam anxiety, there is no automated virtual reality support program developed yet. The aim of this study is to develop a cognitive-behavioral therapy-based automatic virtual reality application and test its effectiveness to create a preventive support system for anxious students who are preparing for an exam. 54 volunteer students selected from three schools in Ankara were randomly assigned by the computer program to the experimental group (n = 18), the placebo control group (n = 18), and the waiting-list control group (n = 18) after stratified by gender and test anxiety level. Westside Test Anxiety Scale (WTAS), Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ), State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) were used as measurement tools twice (before and after the study) with two-week intervals. Mixed Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used in repeated measurements and Tukey test was used to determine the difference between groups. According to results, the use of the application had a statistically significant positive effect on exam anxiety and state anxiety, but no significant effect was observed between groups on trait anxiety and negative automatic thoughts. As a result, the findings showed that computer-assisted CBT-based virtual reality applications can be an option for psychological support that can be used to reduce test anxiety.