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AP News released an article about the YIKES project we developed with Eli Lebowitz, assistant professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University and Director of the Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program. YIKES is a prototype developed to meassure avoidance behaviour through motion-tracking technology.
AP News highlights the novel approach of the YIKES project to a clinical study.
In the article, Dr. Lebowitz explains the difficulties of meassuring avoidance behavior, since it is something a person does not do instead of an action they actually perform. It is not as straightforward to meassure as something like a hearth rate.
Dr. Lebowitz is quoted in the article: “The real problem is not that I’m afraid of the thing; it’s that I start avoiding a variety of situations that make me fear. Avoidance is germane and central to anxiety disorders, but it’s also a challenge because it’s a non-behavior. It’s not like measuring a heartbeat. We’re talking about a behavior that (a person is) not doing.”
Through YIKES, which stands for Yale Interactive Kinect Environment Software, participants see themselves as players on a screen and have to move back and forth between two images that stimulate feelings of fear or safety in order to catch falling balls and earn points.
Bernard states in the article that he is happy with the end result:“This game is really simple but it has a big impact. It’s something we can be proud of because it has a big impact on researchers.”
In a clinical study, YIKES proved a more reliable way of meassuring avoidance behavior over the traditional method of questionnaires and interviews.
You can read the full article on the AP News website.