Knowledge transfer in psychotherapy

How to achieve a success rate of 90%

Psychotherapy is also about imparting knowledge. Think of psychoeducation and the many dialogue sessions that help your patients learn about themselves or external influences.

Findings from learning psychology can help to make this knowledge transfer more effective. This is because there are different ways of absorbing information: listening, reading, watching, doing it yourself and some of these in combination.

Doing instead of listening in psychotherapy

The most common way in which patients absorb information in psychotherapy is by listening. However, after reading, this is the second weakest way of absorbing information. The probability that the content heard is retained is only 20% (only 10% for reading). However, retaining the content would be desirable. After all, much of this information is intended to help people to adopt new behaviour in difficult situations. These are often stressful and emotionalising situations. Here, the probability that learned content can be recalled and steer one’s own behaviour in a desired direction could decrease even further.

In learning psychology, the most effective way of absorbing information is to do it yourself. The probability of retention is given as 90%! In the school context, this realisation has long since led to as many interactive units as possible instead of just frontal teaching. In psychotherapy, however, this is rarely taken into account. However, interactive units can also provide a remedy here. For example, role plays, exposures outside in real situations or exposures in virtual situations with VR glasses in the practice or treatment room.

Tabelle: Wissensvermittlung EN
Source: Effective learning by Kevin Schroer

VR glasses for new learning experiences in anxiety and addiction therapy

If, for example, you explain to a patient in psychoeducation that it is merely a symptom that when you look down you get the feeling that you are about to fall, then there is only a 20% chance that the patient will remember this in her next height situation and remain calm and master this situation, . Wenn sie stattdessen diese Erfahrung selbst in einer VR-Brille macht, während sie langsam über ein Brett balancing at great heights, remaining stable and walking confidently forwards and backwards, then the probability increases to 90% that her everyday situations will be easier because of this learning experience.

Angsttherapie-Höhe
During psychoeducation, the patient learnt that anxiety comes in waves and that the anxiety stimulus becomes less and less intense. She was able to experience exactly that in the VR glasses.

The same applies to addiction patients. A common relapse situation is that once you’ve had the bottle at the till, you get the feeling that there’s no way out now, you have to buy this product. In conversations, it is then conveyed that you can still return the product, even if it has already been scanned. Your patient will nod in agreement. But what if you let them actively do this several times? In a therapeutic virtual reality scenario in which he stands at the supermarket checkout and returns the bottle, saying to the cashier: ‘Sorry, I don’t want to buy this.

Here too, the probability that your patient will remember this in a similar everyday situation could rise to 90%.

We consider hearing and seeing in combination to be another interesting way of receiving information. This is because this absorption of information takes place in group therapies. If our VR system is used in an alcohol group, only one to three patients per session will have the learning experience with the VR glasses themselves. The other group members follow on a screen what the patient sees and does in the VR glasses. When listening and watching in combination, the probability of retention also increases to a remarkable 50%.

Suchttherapie Alkohol
A patient practises putting beer bottles back in the supermarket. According to learning psychology, the effect size of his learning success is 90%. For the other group participants in this session, it is 50%. For all others, with whom only the topic is discussed, it is 20%.

If the therapies are aimed at coping with difficult situations, we believe that learning new behaviours plays a key role and should be supplemented by interactive sessions.

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