Monash University human-computer interaction researchers have developed a playful water-inspired extended reality system using floatation tanks to help reduce aquaphobia.

The study, published as part of the Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems this year, was led by researchers from the Faculty of Information Technology’s Exertion Games Lab.

The research combined a water-based virtual reality (VR) landscape with the controlled environment of a water-filled floatation tank to help participants overcome the fear of water. The results showed participants experienced less anxiety regarding water while experiencing the extended reality system.

The experience involves floating in a tank while a VR headset delivers a virtual auditory and visual environment. The participant’s heart rate (measured using a sensor), breathing (sensed via the headset’s microphone), and slight head movements (sensed via the headset) control interactions within the virtual environment.

The lead author of the research paper, human-computer interaction researcher Ph.D. Candidate Maria Montoya, said people who fear being in water are often unable to enjoy recreational activities in water and can even develop a fear of drowning.

“We believe there is an opportunity for interactive systems to bring people closer to water in fun and accessible ways,” Montoya said.

“Similar to virtual reality exposure therapy, which progressively engages people to face fearful situations, the extended reality (XR) system we developed offers rewards with playful experiences through an entertaining interactive story to encourage participants to be in the floatation tank for increasingly longer periods of time.”

The XR experience provides an interactive journey where the participant is guided through three main virtual water worlds by a virtual character called a “water spirit.” The water spirit is a guide that provides the participant with verbal assurances that they are doing fine and are safe and encourages them to enjoy the experience.

The “journey” in this VR experience is similar to exposure therapy’s “step-by-step” progressive exposure of participants to a fearful situation.

In the third and final stage of the XR experience, the participant moves skyward, and the water spirit guides them to navigate through cyclones and encourages them to control their heart rate to stop the rain and storms.

The researchers enabled hands-free interactions by using the headset’s sensors and microphone to encourage body relaxation suitable for people with a fear of being in the water. This helped the participants to not be concerned with performing any strenuous or complex movements while they were in water.

The study worked with twelve participants who had a self-reported fear of being in water. The procedure consisted of six steps including recording the baseline heart rate of the participants while they lay on a yoga mat before entering the water, floating in the tank without technology and then adding the XR experience with a headset while the participants were floating in the water.

Co-author of the research, Exertion Games Lab Director Professor Florian “Floyd’ Mueller, said the study results confirmed that the XR system helped to reduce the participants’ fear of being in water.

“Our heart rate variability index showed the participants tended to be less anxious while they were being entertained by the XR system compared to when they were floating in the tank without any technology,” Professor Mueller said.

“We hope that our research and findings might help psychologists, mental health professionals, health care workers and other human-computer interaction researchers to explore extended reality as a viable means to develop interventions to manage aquaphobia and possibly other phobias.”

A new study by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Institute of Arctic Biology provides compelling evidence that Canada lynx populations in Interior Alaska experience a “traveling population wave” affecting their reproduction, movement and survival.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This discovery could help wildlife managers make better-informed decisions when managing one of the boreal forest’s keystone predators.

A traveling population wave is a common dynamic in biology, in which the number of animals in a habitat grows and shrinks, moving across a region like a ripple.

Alaska’s Canada lynx populations rise and fall in response to the 10- to 12-year boom-and-bust cycle of their primary prey: the snowshoe hare. During these cycles, hares reproduce rapidly, and then their population crashes when food resources become scarce. The lynx population follows this cycle, typically lagging one to two years behind.

The study, which ran from 2018 to 2022, began at the peak of this cycle, according to Derek Arnold, lead investigator. Researchers tracked the reproduction, movement and survival of lynx as the population collapsed.

Between 2018 and 2022, biologists live-trapped 143 lynx across five national wildlife refuges in Interior Alaska—Tetlin, Yukon Flats, Kanuti and Koyukuk—as well as Gates of the Arctic National Park. The lynx were outfitted with GPS collars, allowing satellites to track their movements across the landscape and yielding an unprecedented body of data.

Arnold explained that lynx responded to the collapse of the snowshoe hare population in three distinct stages, with changes originating in the east and moving westward—clear evidence of a traveling population wave.

• Reproduction decline: The first response was a sharp decline in reproduction. At the height of the cycle, when the study began, Arnold said researchers sometimes found as many as eight kittens in a single den. However, reproduction in the easternmost study site ceased first, and by the end of the study, it had dropped to zero across all study areas.
• Increased dispersal: After reproduction fell, lynx began to disperse, moving out of their original territories in search of better conditions. They traveled in all directions. “We thought there would be natural barriers to their movement, like the Brooks Range or Denali. But they chugged right across mountain ranges and swam across rivers,” Arnold said. “That was shocking to us.” One lynx traveled nearly 1,000 miles to the Alberta border.
• Survival decline: In the final stage, survival rates dropped. While lynx dispersed in all directions, those that traveled eastward—against the wave—had significantly higher mortality rates than those that moved westward or stayed within their original territories.

Arnold said the study’s findings won’t sound surprising to anyone with real-life experience observing lynx and hares. “People like trappers have observed this pattern anecdotally for a long, long time. The data just provides evidence to support it and helps us see the big picture,” he said.

“We’ve long known that hares and lynx operate on a 10- to 12-year cycle, but we didn’t fully understand how it played out across the landscape,” Arnold said. “It wasn’t clear if the cycle occurred simultaneously across the state or if it happened in isolated areas at different times.

“Knowing that the wave usually sweeps from east to west makes lynx population trends more predictable,” he said. “It will be easier for wildlife managers to make informed decisions now that we can predict how a population is going to behave on a more local scale, instead of just looking at the state as a whole.”

Another key takeaway is the importance of maintaining refuge populations. “The lynx that disperse during population declines don’t usually survive. Most of them don’t make it when they leave their home areas,” Arnold said.

Other UAF authors include Greg Breed, Shawn Crimmins and Knut Kielland.