Public speaking anxiety (PSA) is defined as a strong distress when performing a speech in front of an audience, causing impairment in terms of work possibilities and social relationships. Audience behavior and feedback received during a speech are a crucial variable to induce PSA, affecting performance and perception. In this study, two different virtual reality public speaking scenarios were developed to investigate the impact of positive (more assertive) versus negative (more hostile) audience behavior regarding perceived anxiety and physiological arousal during performance. Moreover, the presence of any carry-over effect based on first experiences (positive vs. negative) was investigated by using a within-between design. Both explicit (questionnaires) and implicit physiological measures (heart rate [HR]) were used to assess participants' experience. The results confirmed the influence of audience behavior on perceived anxiety. As expected, negative audience elicited greater anxiety and lower experience pleasantness. More interesting, the first experience influenced the perceived anxiety and arousal during performance, suggesting some sort of priming effect due to the valence of previous experience. In particular, starting with an encouraging feedback scenario did not increase the perceived anxiety and HR in front of a subsequent annoying audience. This modulation did not appear in the group who started with the annoying audience, which clearly reported higher HR and anxiety during the annoying exposure compared with the encouraging audience. These results are discussed considering previous evidence on the effect of feedback on performance. In addition, physiological results are interpreted considering the role of somatic marker theory in human performance.

中文翻译：

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先前暴露对虚拟现实的影响诱发公众演讲焦虑：一项生理和行为研究。

公开演讲焦虑 (PSA) 被定义为在观众面前演讲时的强烈痛苦，导致工作可能性和社会关系方面的损害。演讲期间听众的行为和收到的反馈是诱发 PSA、影响表现和感知的关键变量。在这项研究中，开发了两种不同的虚拟现实公开演讲场景，以调查积极（更自信）与消极（更具敌意）的听众行为对表演过程中感知焦虑和生理唤醒的影响。此外，通过使用中间设计研究了基于第一次经验（积极与消极）的任何遗留效应的存在。显式（问卷）和隐式生理测量（心率 [HR]）均用于评估参与者的 经验。结果证实了观众行为对感知焦虑的影响。正如预期的那样，消极的听众会引起更大的焦虑和更低的体验愉悦度。更有趣的是，第一次体验影响了表演过程中感知到的焦虑和唤醒，这表明由于先前体验的效价而产生某种启动效应。特别是，从一个令人鼓舞的反馈场景开始，并没有增加随后烦人的观众面前的焦虑感和心率。这种调节并没有出现在以恼人的观众开始的小组中，与鼓励的观众相比，在恼人的观众中明显报告了更高的 HR 和焦虑。考虑到以前关于反馈对绩效影响的证据，讨论了这些结果。此外，