BBC 6分钟英语学习 VR能治疗恐惧症吗？

6 min English from BBC learning english dot com.

Hello. This is minute English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Robb and I'm Sam

here at 6 min English. We love to chat about new technology.

One of our favorite topics is VR, or virtual reality, and the ways that shaping life in the future.

VR allows you to put on a headset and escape into a completely different world.

In this program, well be hearing about some of the ways Via is tackling serious problems like domestic violence and helping people overcome phobias, the strong in a rational fear of something.

And of course, we'll be learning some useful related vocabulary along the way.

People who use the are often describe the experience as intense.

Putting on the headset makes you feel you're really there in whatever new world you've chosen.

And it's this intensity that inventors, scientists and therapists are using to help people overcome their problems.

We'll hear more soon, but 1st, I have a question for you, sam.

One of the phobias VR can help with is the fear of heights.

But what is the proper name for this psychological disorder?

Is the fear of heights? Called a electorophobia, b erecnophobia or c acrophobia?

I'll say a electorophobia. OK, sam, we'll find out the answer at the end of the program.

Now, if, like me, you're not very good with heights, you'll be happy to know that a company called Oxford VR has designed a system to help with precisely that problem in the safety of your own home.

You push on a headset and are guided through a series of tasks, moving you higher and higher off the ground.

You start by taking an elevator to the top floor of tall buildings, and move on to harder challenges, like climbing a rope.

Daniel Freeman is a professor of clinical psychology at Oxford University.

Listen as he explains how the VR experience works to BBC World Service program People fixing the world.

Even though you're conscious, where it's a simulation, it doesn't stop all your habitual reactions to heights happening, and that's really important, and that's why it's got such a potential to be therapeutic, the art of successful therapy.

And what you can do really, really well in VR is enable someone to drop those defenses.

And VR, A person is more able to drop them because they know there's no real height there.

Although the VR experience seems real, the person using it knows it's only a simulation, a pretend copy of the real thing.

This gives them confidence to go higher, knowing they can't really get hurt.

But although it's simulated, the experience is real enough to trick your mind into acting in its habitual way, the way it usually typically works, although your brain knows you have both feet on the ground.

V-I so realistic that to complete the tasks, you have to drop your defenses, a phrase meaning to relax and trust people by lowering the psychological barriers you have built to protect yourself.

Oxford Vias Fear of Heights experience uses VR to put people into another world.

But the next project will hear about takes things even further, pushing people into someone else's body.

In Barcelona, a VR simulation is being used in prisons to make men convicted of domestic violence aware of what it feels like to be in the position of their victims.

The project called Virtual Embodiment is led by neuroscientist Mavi Sanchez Vivez of barcelona's Institute for Biomedical Research.

So in a virtual world, we can be someone different and have a 1st person embodied perspective from the point of view, e.g.

of a different person, different gender, different AIDS.

One can go through different situations and have the experience from this totally novel perspective, many of the prisoners lack empathy for their victims.

Virtual embodiment works by giving these men the experience of abuse in the 1st person, from the perspective of someone who actually experiences an event in person.

In VR, the men have the insults and abuse they gave to others turn back on them.

It's a novel, a new and original experience for them, and not a pleasant one either.

But the VR therapy seems to be working, and dr Sanchez Vivez reports more and more of the prisoners successfully reintegrating into their communities after their release from prison.

The experience VR creates, of seeing things from someone else's point of view can be therapeutic, even for serious problems.

And speaking of problems, what was the answer to your question?

Rob Ah, I are, sam, whether the correct name for the fear of heights was a electorophobia, a racnophobia

or acrophobia. I guessed it was electorophobia,

which was the wrong answer. Electorophobia is the fear of chickens.

The correct answer was c acrophobia, a fear of heights and a good example of a phobia.

Hmm. Let's recap the rest of the vocabulary we've learned, starting with simulation.

A pretend copy of something that looks real but is not habitual describes the usual typical way something works.

The phrase Drop your defenses means to relax and trust something by lowering your psychological barriers in the 1st person, means talking about something from the perspective of the person who actually experienced an event themselves.

And finally, the adjective novel means completely new and original, unlike anything that's happened before.

Ah, well, once again, our 6 min are really and virtually over.

Goodbye for now. Bye 6 min English from the BBC.

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