The new vision for DEEP is premiering at Cannes this week

The new vision for DEEP is premiering at Cannes this week

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This week has been a special one for the team. We have had a long hiatus from the festival circuit. This is partly due to the pandemic and partly due to the focus on rebuilding this new iteration of the project. But we are back! And at Cannes no less. We are part of the Unity for Humanity showcase which is a part of Cannes XR. It is such an honor to return to such a prestigious showcase. And there will be more to come…

DEEP will be a part of the Museum of Other Realities and you have have a look yourself on Steam. Of course it pains us not to be able to attend in person. Many of our favorite creators and artists shall be there. However we did have a wonderful virtual celebration, as you can see.

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This version of DEEP being shown is part of our new vision that will be launching on Oculus Quest soon. We will let you know as soon as we have a date. In the meantime you can take a peek at one of the wonderful spaces that is in there.

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Deep Presents Biofeedback Webinar with Immerse UK

How can biofeedback-based VR experiences can be used for anxiety management. In May 2020, we were joined by Joanneke Weerdmeester from the Games for Emotional and Mental Health Lab, Radboud University to explore further.

What is the importance cross-disciplinary collaboration between arts and science and the implications for immersive tech? In this webinar, we explore how VR can be a valuable tool in anxiety management, and to share theoretical and practical considerations for using biofeedback in VR. Leading behavioural scientist, Joanneke Weerdmeester shares best practice, lessons learned and recommendations for research and design.

Watch Full Video Here

About this event

To emphasise the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration between arts and science. To explore how VR can be a valuable tool in anxiety management, and to share theoretical and practical considerations for using biofeedback in VR.

During this webinar, we will be discussing:

  • Best research practices;

  • Case studies;

  • Lessons from the trenches;

  • Recommendations for research and design.

 

About Joanneke Weerdmeester 

Joanneke Weerdmeester MSc is a behavioural scientist based at the Games for Emotional and Mental Health Lab, Radboud University, Netherlands. She is the primary researcher at Deep, a meditative virtual reality game controlled by breathing. Over the last few years, she has been running extensive research on the efficacy of Deep in reducing anxiety.

DEEP to Reduce Anxiety and Disruptive Classroom Behaviour

DEEP to Reduce Anxiety and Disruptive Classroom Behaviour

Rineke Bossenbroek is a teacher in Pedagogical Sciences at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. She collaborated with the Deep research team to explore how it could be used to offer support to students at special needs schools. Here she shares a summary of this research - full article available at the end.


Around 30% of adolescents in special needs education struggle with intense feelings of anxiety [1]. For example, they excessively worry about the future or are afraid that other children won’t like them. Chronic feelings of anxiety can have a tremendous negative impact on adolescents’ mental health, academic achievement and social functioning [2]. Effective intervention programs that help adolescents cope with anxiety are urgently needed, but conventional school-based programs often yield disappointing outcomes [3,4]. In particular, existing interventions often do not take into consideration that many anxious adolescents in special education suffer from coexisting disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which can limit their ability to benefit from talk therapies [5,6]. Furthermore, a serious barrier in conventional programs for anxiety has been to intrinsically motivate and engage children [7]. We believe video games hold great promise as a novel intervention approach for adolescents in special needs schools. 

In 2018 researchers from the GEMH lab have investigated the use of DEEP - a breath controlled virtual reality experience -  as an intervention for anxiety in a special school setting. DEEP targets a fundamental causal mechanism that contributes to the development and maintenance of anxiety symptoms: physiological reactivity. Physiological reactivity refers to the body’s response to a stressor. Anxious youth are characterised by intensified physiological responding in stressful situations. For example, they may start to breathe faster or their heart rate may increase. DEEP incorporates two evidence-based techniques, biofeedback and diaphragmatic breathing exercises, to teach players how to regulate high levels of physiological arousal and anxiety [8–10].

Results from a previous pilot study showed that DEEP reduced levels of anxiety directly after playing the game in a sample of 86 typically developing children [11]. However, it is still unknown how DEEP would affect anxiety in children with complex needs nor how long the calm/relaxed state would be maintained following playing DEEP. As the biofeedback mechanisms in DEEP might also help adolescents to recognize their internal physiological states, an important yet uncertain additional effect of DEEP could be an improvement in their ability to regulate behaviour. Since our study was conducted in a special needs school, we were specifically interested in DEEP’s effect on disruptive behaviours in the classroom, which is a place where disruptive behaviours occur frequently and may significantly hamper students’ learning and performances.

Therefore, our study examined the effect of DEEP on daily levels of state-anxiety (i.e., how anxious one feels in the moment) and disruptive classroom behaviour in a sample of eight anxious adolescents attending a secondary special needs school in the Netherlands. Three times a day, the participants reported their state-anxiety and teachers reported on the participant’s classroom behaviour. Observed classroom behaviours were measured with personalised questionnaires about each participating adolescent (e.g. talked out of turn, got out of their chair and walked around the classroom). In addition, we examined the feasibility and implementation potential of DEEP by conducting exit-interviews with the adolescents, their teachers and the school clinicians.Results showed that:

·   A total of 6 out of 8 children showed reductions in anxiety and 5 out of 8 participants decreased in disruptive classroom behaviour with the introduction of DEEP.

·   The calm/relaxed state participants experienced after playing DEEP lasted around 2 hours on average.

·   The exit-interviews with adolescents, teachers, and school clinicians suggested that they enjoyed having access to DEEP, and it could continue to be a feasible intervention to implement in a special needs school setting.

DEEP was perceived as an attractive game-based intervention as adolescents liked the game environment and way of moving using their breathing. Some adolescents disliked that there was no goal in the game and consequently missed challenge. However, the majority of participants described that they learned through DEEP how to ‘empty their minds’ and how to calm down in stressful situations by controlling their breath:

·   “Usually I get very angry when somebody is being mean to me, but now I try to stay calm and focus on my breathing.”

·   “DEEP helped me to feel calm […]. I now try to focus on my breathing during exams.”

·   “The underwater world looked beautiful!”

·   “I liked that I could move by my breathing.”

·   “I really liked the moving elements. It was cool to see how the fish and plants were moving with my breathing.”

Teachers and school clinicians also emphasised DEEP’s potential as intervention for adolescents struggling with stress, anxiety and self-regulation. Most participants, teachers and the school clinicians indicated that they would want to continue using DEEP. However, there were some concerns regarding the workload and technical requirements for using the VR system (which in this case was an HTC Vive). Therefore, more accessible alternatives such as phone applications or more user-friendly head mounted displays like the Oculus Quest should be explored in the future - something the DEEP development team are now exploring. 

In sum, our study demonstrated the potential of DEEP as an intervention to reduce daily levels of state-anxiety and disruptive classroom behaviour in a special school setting. On overage, our results showed that the calm or relaxed state of participants after playing DEEP lasted for 2 hours. Therefore, school clinicians are recommended to tailor implementation strategies of DEEP to the individual with different needs early or later in the day, considering individual variation in the duration of the effect of DEEP. The implementation of game-based interventions might be a promising avenue for the special school setting, as video games can be tailored to the diverse needs and learning paces of the heterogeneous special school population.

The team are now working to improve the gameplay experiences of DEEP, by adding more elements and increasing  the world through which users can move. Intervention outcomes could also potentially be increased by providing the players insight in their (breathing) progression in the game so they can make the transfer from the skills learned in DEEP to their behaviors in the classroom. 

Eastern philosophy and now modern psychology show that taking a moment to stop and practice meditative breathing has extensive health benefits for us all. We all occasionally need an escape, a chance to reconnect with our brains and bodies. DEEP is hopefully a gateway to helping people get there. The DEEP team now  intend to share the experience in a variety of settings. From hospital waiting rooms, to schools and preparing expecting mothers for birth and even helping people with respiratory conditions such as COPD, hyperventilation and possibly even breathing pattern disorders that may result in people recovering from COVID. 

Read the full article here. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Rineke Bossenbroek currently works as a teacher in Pedagogical Sciences at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. She obtained a bachelor in Pedagogy and Educational Sciences and a Research Master in Behavioural Science in Nijmegen. The DEEP study was the graduation project of her research masters programme. She also obtained a clinical master in Pedagogical Sciences and completed her clinical internship at GGZ Oost Brabant. Her research interests focus on psychological interventions and processes of clinical change in youth psychotherapy.  

 

References

1. Vonck E, Scholte E. Angstig depressieve kinderen in het speciaal onderwijs [Anxious depressed children in special education]. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: SWP; 2008. ISBN:9789066659803

2. Woodward LJ, Fergusson DM. Life course outcomes of young people with anxiety disorders in adolescence. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2001;40(9):1086–1093. PMID:11556633

3. Mychailyszyn MP, Brodman DM, Read KL, Kendall PC. Cognitive-behavioral school-based interventions for anxious and depressed youth: a meta-analysis of outcomes. Clin Psychol Sci Pract 2012;19(2):129–153. [doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2850.2012.01279.x]

4. Werner-Seidler A, Perry Y, Calear AL, Newby JM, Christensen H. School-based depression and anxiety prevention programs for young people: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clin Psychol Rev 2017;51:30–47. PMID:27821267

5. Silver M, Oakes P. Evaluation of a new computer intervention to teach people with autism or asperger syndrome to recognize and predict emotions in others. Autism 2001;5(3):299–316. PMID:11708589

6. Weiss M, Safren SA, Solanto M V, Hechtman L, Rostain AL, Ramsay JR, Murray C. Research forum on psychological treatment of adults with ADHD. J Atten Disord 2008;11(6):642–651. PMID:18417729

7. Mennuti RB, Christner RW. An introduction to cognitive-behavioral therapy with youth. In: Mennuti RB, Christner RW, Freeman A, editors. Cogn Interv Educ settings A Handb Pract 2nd ed New York: Taylor & Francis; 2012. p. 13–30.

8. Chen YF, Huang XY, Chien CH, Cheng JF. The effectiveness of diaphragmatic breathing relaxation training for reducing anxiety. Perspect Psychiatr Care 2017;53(4):329–336. PMID:27553981

9. Han JN, Stegen K, De Valck C, Clément J, Van de Woestijne KP. Influence of breathing therapy on complaints, anxiety and breathing pattern in patients with hyperventilation syndrome and anxiety disorders. J Psychosom Res 1996;41(5):481–493. PMID:9032712

10. Schoenberg PLA, David AS. Biofeedback for psychiatric disorders: A systematic review. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback 2014;39(2):109–135. PMID:24806535

11. Van Rooij M, Lobel A, Harris O, Smit N, Granic I. DEEP: A biofeedback virtual reality game for children at-risk for anxiety. Proc 2016 CHI Conf Ext Abstr Hum Factors Comput Syst 2016;1989–1997. [doi: 10.1145/2851581.2892452]