Sensorily Stressed: Using Virtual Reality Technology to Examine the Relationship between Sensory Sensitivities and Anxiety

在现代社会，焦虑正变得越来越成问题。它正在对我们的社会和个人福祉产生负面影响，并因医疗需求增加和人们工作效率下降而使美国经济损失超过350亿美元。这种焦虑的来源之一是我们的感官，一些人发现他们对日常环境的反应太强烈了。这在自闭症患者中最为常见，但也在整个人群中都有发现。关于感官和焦虑之间的关系，有相互竞争的理论，但他们的大多数关键研究都使用了调查。这个项目的目的是利用虚拟现实中的实验来测试这些理论的关键预测。第一步将是开发虚拟环境，在其中我们可以测试参与者并成功地让他们或多或少地感到焦虑。一旦做到了这一点，就可以测试感官敏感度导致焦虑的程度，反之亦然。这些发现将立即适用于帮助患有由感觉环境引起的严重焦虑的人。长远来说，我们会与研究小组已有的社群和业界伙伴合作，作出更广泛的改变，以帮助受影响轻微的人士。这将使儿童和成年人过上更健康、更幸福、更有成效的生活。

Anxiety is becoming increasingly problematic in modern-day society. It is negatively impacting our societal and individual well-being, as well as costing the US economy over $35 billion because of increased healthcare demands and people working less effectively. One of the sources of this anxiety is our senses, where some people find that they respond too strongly to everyday environments. This is most common in autistic people but is also found throughout the population. There are competing theories describing the relationship between the senses and anxiety, but most of their key studies have used surveys. The aim of this project is to use experiments in Virtual Reality to test the key predictions of these theories. The first steps will be developing virtual environments in which we can test the participants and successfully make them more or less anxious. Once this has been done, it will be possible to test the extent to which sensory sensitivities lead to anxiety versus the other way around. These findings will be immediately applicable to help people suffering from severe anxiety caused by their sensory environment. In the long term, in collaboration with the pre-existing community and industrial partners of the research group, wider changes will be made to help the mildly affected. This will lead to children and working adults leading healthier, happier, and more productive lives.