A free online platform that allows speakers to practise in front of thousands of virtual spectators has been released to help with the anxiety many feel when presenting to an audience.
Dr Chris Macdonald, the founder of the Immersive Technology Lab at Cambridge University and who created the online platform, said the approach was an attempt to reduce the lengthy waits or high costs people often face when seeking help.
“Most people have some form of speech anxiety [but] very, very few people are accessing the treatment. So what I was trying to do with this project is fix those barriers,” he said.
The Virtual Reality Public Speaking platform employs exposure therapy – the idea that confronting fears can help reduce them – combined with breathing exercises and eye movements that help slow the heart rate and suppress the fear response.
People using the technology can practise speaking in various virtual reality (VR) settings, from an empty classroom or small audiences of photorealistic figures that yawn and scratch, to a stadium of 10,000 spectators, with the option to add distractions such as flashing cameras and loud noises.
Macdonald said the latter was an example of “overexposure therapy”.
“The idea behind it is that this will give them extra resilience and adaptability – you can think of it like the psychological equivalent of training with weights or running with weights or at high altitudes,” he said, adding that the hope was that subsequently presenting to a smaller real life audience would feel like a “step down” by comparison.
Macdonald said the platform – which incorporates learning materials, feedback mechanisms and scenarios such as job interviews – works on both Android and iOS operating systems and can be accessed through a laptop or VR headset or via a smartphone that can be inserted into a cheap mount.
A recent study published by Macdonald in the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality suggests the platform could be beneficial. The research involved 29 adolescents from China, who each undertook a 30-minute session in which they alternated between using the VR system and practising a simple breathing exercise, after which they delivered a prepared one-minute script in English to 34 people in real life.
The percentage of students who said they were anxious public speakers fell from 65% before the experiment to 20% after the presentations, while the percentage who described themselves as confident rose from 31% to 79%. More students said they enjoyed public speaking after using the platform.
Macdonald said another yet to be published study involving 18 students who did not have to subsequently give an in-person presentation revealed all participants found a week of self-guided use to be beneficial, for example in feeling more confident or better able to manage nerves.
While Macdonald said further experiments with control groups and larger numbers of participants were planned, tens of thousands of people have used the platform during its development. “I don’t just want to build something that’s effective. I want to build something that can and will be used,” he said.
Dr Matteo Cella, a psychologist and leader of the virtual reality lab at King’s College London, who was not involved in the work, said the platform built on the concepts of traditional exposure therapy, making it more accessible and easy to implement.
But Cella said there was a potential risk overexposure could reinforce people’s avoidance of public speaking, and that robust randomised control trials were needed to evaluate the system, noting the published work did not offer many insights on its efficacy.
“There is a lot of enthusiasm and problem-solving energy from digital innovators to address pressing mental health challenges in our society, but unfortunately many products have poor uptake and short lifespan due to their very rapid development and limited evidence,” he said.
Dr Kim Smallman of Cardiff University also said more work was needed. “It’s promising to see open-source innovation in this space, particularly in how VR can enhance engagement and accessibility to skills development and potentially therapeutic content. However, as with any emerging technology, it’s crucial to evaluate its real-world impact, how people use it, whether it truly improves confidence and reduces anxiety, and what unintended effects might arise.”
