Training with virtual reality simulations: its effects on public speaking anxiety and public speaking performance in a secondary school setting

Abstract

Public speaking anxiety using virtual reality exposure (VRE) has mainly focused on distress arousal, especially with participants with social anxiety disorders (SAD). The present study has the goal of assessing the value of virtual reality training in the context of public speaking abilities with adolescents not only to assess its effects on anxiety but also on public speaking performance in front of a real audience. A total of 56 secondary-school students participated in a 3-session between-subject training experiment with a pre-test and post-test design. While the VR group produced three brief speeches within a virtual reality setting using three different virtual audience scenarios, the non-VR group performed those speeches using the traditional method of practicing alone in a room. An analysis of the public speaking anxiety and the listener-oriented public speaking performance at pre-test and post-test revealed that a 3-session virtual reality training reduces the participants’ perception of anxiety and encourages future longer pre-/post-test experiment designs to study its implications on the anxiety self-assessments and on the public speaking performance. Education implications are also discussed.