Papers by Wijnand IJsselsteijn
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Dec 1, 2020
Human-Computer Interaction, Aug 9, 2023
Annual review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine, Jun 1, 2018
Therapeutic rapport and empathy are essential parts of the relationship between mental health car... more Therapeutic rapport and empathy are essential parts of the relationship between mental health care professionals and their clients and are considered key elements of good therapeutic outcome. There are various social interaction technologies that have proven to be beneficial to current psychotherapeutic practice. Despite their proven efficacy, the adoption of these technologies among therapists is still relatively low. A prominent reason for this is the perception that mediated communication does not allow for satisfying empathic interactions. However, new technological developments offer opportunities that could help overcome this barrier and possibly even enhance the empathic interaction. The current paper explores these novel technologies in a systematic way by mapping them to the three components of empathy (cognition, affect, behavior). By identifying these opportunities, we hope to encourage a new way of thinking about technology, emphasizing its potential added value to the quality of psychological treatment, and eventually aiming to broaden the array of available treatment possibilities for mental healthcare professionals.
Digital Games Research Association Conference, 2009
Frontiers in Psychiatry
As a consequence of the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic in the spring of 2020, large-sca... more As a consequence of the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic in the spring of 2020, large-scale social distancing measures were implemented, resulting in the forced adoption of online or digital forms of psychological treatment. This sudden transition to digital care offered a unique opportunity to investigate if and how this experience impacted mental healthcare professionals’ perceptions and use of Digital Mental Health tools. The current paper presents findings of a repeated cross-sectional study consisting of three iterations of a national online survey in the Netherlands. This survey contained open and closed questions on professionals’ adoption readiness, frequency of use, perceived competency, and perceived value of Digital Mental Health collected in 2019 (before the pandemic), in 2020 (after the first wave), and in 2021 (after the second wave). The inclusion of data gathered prior to the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique window to assess how professionals’ adoption has d...
Annual review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine, Dec 16, 2020
Social interaction technologies have increasingly become available to psychotherapeutic practice.... more Social interaction technologies have increasingly become available to psychotherapeutic practice. Despite evidence for their efficacy and other unique benefits, adoption among therapists is still relatively low. A main barrier for therapists is their perception that the ability to empathize and connect with their clients is compromised in technology-mediated interactions. However, the unique affordances of technologies also offer opportunities that could help overcome this barrier and possibly even enhance the empathic interaction. One potential direction is to augment social interaction with feedback derived from psychophysiological measures. A specific interpersonal psychophysiological phenomenon that seems particularly relevant is psychophysiological synchronization, the occurrence of substantial levels of synchrony in human physiology between persons, which has been linked to empathy. The current study investigates the effect of (simulated) feedback about psychophysiological synchronization on perceived empathy and connectedness. Sixty-six participants received simulated feedback, indicating high or low synchronization, while watching an emotionally salient movie simultaneously with a confederate in a separate room. Participants receiving feedback indicating high synchronization reported higher levels of perceived empathy and connectedness compared to the low synchronization feedback group. This study suggests that feedback about physiological synchronization might be used to influence levels of empathy and connectedness in remote interactions, which could potentially be applied to increase empathy between therapists and clients in technology-mediated psychological treatment
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
Though educators often deal with stressful social conflicts, many face them ad hoc without much t... more Though educators often deal with stressful social conflicts, many face them ad hoc without much training. We studied if and how virtual agents can help University staff manage student-teacher conflicts. We explored educators' verbal, behavioral, and physiological reactions to a virtual agent that brought up a student-teacher conflict and held exit-interviews. Our qualitative analysis revealed that virtual agents for conflict training were positively received, but not for conflict mediation with cross-cultural differences. Those with non-Western backgrounds felt that an agent could help “save face,” whereas Westerners preferred to resolve conflicts in person. In line with this, participants with a Western background rated the virtual agent to be less competent compared to those with non-Western backgrounds. While physiological measures only allow for limited conclusions, we found that participants who believed that the agent was controlled by a human had higher normalized hear ra...
Background:Online and mobile technologies offer major opportunities in supporting mental healthca... more Background:Online and mobile technologies offer major opportunities in supporting mental healthcare. Online treatment carries several distinct advantages and convincing evidence is available for its clinical efficacy. However, adoption rates of online tools in clinical practice remain low. Our work is aimed to support mental healthcare professionals in exploring eHealth options, and to address some of the inherent limitations of eHealth technology – specifically in mediated interpersonal communication. Methods:Knowledge and experience of mental healthcare professionals regarding eHealth tools were probed using in-depth interviews (N=12). Insights drawn from these interviews were structured by developing a levels-of-adoption model, and will be used to inform ways to enhance online treatment tools. Findings: From the data, several drivers and barriers to the adoption of online treatment emerged. Main barriers consist of lack of skills, knowledge and experience regarding eHealth tools,...
In this deliverable, the WP5 partners present the results of the FUGA construct validity studies.... more In this deliverable, the WP5 partners present the results of the FUGA construct validity studies. The objective of the WP5 was to establish the construct validity of the different potential measures of game experience based on the different measurement techniques. This was the first step to ensure that the game experience measures meet the psychometric criteria that are commonly applied to self-report and behavioral measures. Given that the aim was to thoroughly understand and describe emotion and experience during gaming, the measurements addressed experience at its various response levels, i.e., subjective (cognitive and emotional), behavioral, psychophysiological, and neural. Different measures were construct-validated against the self-report and think-aloud methods and the convergent and discriminant relations between the different measures and between the different types of game episodes were examined. In order to validate and calibrate the objective measures, the GEQ (see Deli...
Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2021
Background The last few decades have witnessed significant advances in the development of digital... more Background The last few decades have witnessed significant advances in the development of digital tools and applications for mental health care. Despite growing evidence for their effectiveness, acceptance and use of these tools in clinical practice remain low. Hence, a validated and easy-to-use instrument for assessing professionals’ readiness to adopt eMental health (EMH) is necessary to gain further insights into the process of EMH adoption and facilitate future research on this topic. Objective The aim of this study is to develop and validate an instrument for assessing mental health care professionals’ readiness to adopt EMH. Methods Item generation was guided by literature and inputs from mental health care professionals and experts in survey development. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted on an initial set of 29 items completed by a sample of mental health care professionals (N=432); thereafter, the scale was reduced to 15 items in an iterative process. The factor str...
BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated an immediate and largescale uptake of online tr... more BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated an immediate and largescale uptake of online treatment in mental healthcare, and we are still unsure about the new normal in mental healthcare in post COVID-19 times. A relevant question we can begin to ask is to what extent the experiences gained during the pandemic will influence a sustainable adoption and implementation of online treatment in mental healthcare in the future. OBJECTIVE In this paper we aim to formulate expectations with regard to the sustainability of online treatment in mental healthcare after COVID-19. METHODS In an interview study 11 mental healthcare professionals were asked about their experiences and expectations for the future. Participants were recruited in a mental healthcare organization in the Netherlands. The interviews took place between 7 April and 30 April 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 crisis in the Netherlands. The data were analyzed using a thematic coding method. RESULTS From the interviews we...
IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 2019
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Papers by Wijnand IJsselsteijn
Keywords: restoration; nature; experience sampling; quantified self; mHealth
narrative involvement.
Keywords
Digital games, massively multiplayer online role-playing game, perception, player involvement, real life