Kaitlin Luna: Hey everyone, its Kaitlin
Luna host of Speaking of Psychology.
This episode was recorded during APA's
Technology, Mind and Society Conference
held in October 2019 in Washington DC.
I was away on maternity
leave during that time.
So my colleague Kim
Mills was a guest host.
We hope you like this episode.
Kim Mills: Hello and welcome to Speaking
of Psychology a bi-weekly podcast from the
American Psychological Association
that explores the connections between
psychological science and everyday life.
I'm your host Kim Mills and I'm coming to
you from APA's annual Technology, Mind and
SocietyCconference in Washington, DC,
a cross-disciplinary meeting to discuss
psychology's role in developing and
advancing everything from virtual reality
to artificial intelligence
to the Internet of Things.
Have you ever wondered why
drivers don't get carsick?
And if you've ever been seasick, are you
curious to know what causes it and what if
anything can be done to stave it off?
Joining me today is Dr.
Arnon Rolnick, a clinical and experimental
psychologist from Israel where he directs
Rolnick's Institute for Advanced
Psychotherapy and studies psychophysiology
and the integration of
technology and psychology.
He spent 20 years as a psychologist in the
Israeli Navy developing various methods to
improve sailors performance and well-being
under conditions attended to make them
seasick.
He is also working on a book exploring how
virtual psychotherapy can open new ways to
study the roles of the body and
brain in therapy welcome Dr.
Rollnick.
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Thank you very much.
Thank you for inviting me.
Kim Mills: One reason I wanted to talk to
you today is to learn more about one of
the papers you're presenting an APA's
Technology, Mind and Society Conference.
It's called Technology Made Us Motion
Sick: Autonomous Cars Will Make Us Vomit.
It's a review of 40 years of research,
which is a lot of time to study motion
sickness.
With the advent of self-driving cars, the
idea that these vehicles might make people
motion sick is one glitch that hasn't
gotten a lot of coverage by the media.
So I'm wondering how much do scientists
know at this point about the likelihood
that this will be a widespread problem.
And what can we do about it?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Well, we studied
this phenomenon for many years.
In fact, this is one of the ancient
problems that technology made.
You know, we were very happy that we could
be moved by cars, ships and horses, but we
were not aware that it will produce such
a debilitating effect like motion sickness
and, not only, we found in my work in the
Navy that people tend to be even helpless.
They feel desperate.
And I connected it to Martin Seligman
theory of learned helplessness.
The exposure to uncontrolled motion is
producing some sickness and not only
sickness, it produces really some type of
depression, which I was able to show in my
research.
So that brought me to the question, how
come there are certain people who are not
sick, like drivers and that came very
nice with the theory of controllability.
What learned helplessness theory predicts
is controllability prevents feeling bad.
So I did this study for almost 40 years
ago and I was not aware at that time that
in a few years from now, everybody will be
will be a passenger and not only they will
be passenger, they will be reading devices
like phones or the kindle because they are
free, they don't have to drive.
So this autonomous car or driverless car
is opening a real problem or producing a
real problem, which we psychologists
will have to deal with.
And I'm going to present a few types of
solutions or possible solutions, which I
did in my work in the Navy.
One of them was artificial horizon.
We do know that the reason motion sickness
develops is because it has to do with some
type of conflict between the information
the eyes get and the information that the
vestibular information
gets, our vestibular system
Kim Mills: Which is in your ear?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: In our inner ear, yes.
And in the study I did with the TNO in
the Netherlands we were able to show that
using artificial horizon, we could
dramatically reduce the amount of motion
sickness and increase performance.
That performance is becoming better as
compared to people who did not have this
artificial horizon, which was kind of
projected on the walls of the tilting room
that we used, but this is
some technical details.
But what I really want to emphasize in
this lecture that I'm going to give which
will be one of another two lectures.
But one of my talks will speak not so
much on technical solution, but that we as
psychologists have to examine
the process of adaptation.
Because people do adapt to motion
sickness, but we don't know enough about
this process and apparently it's not
enough just to be exposed to the motion.
We have to help them using various
cognitive behavioral therapy approaches.
And there is an interesting correlation
now between what I do in my clinical
practice with people who are afraid from
being sick or afraid from vomiting, I'm
doing gradual exposure to motion sickness.
And it is possible that with this
driverless car we will need to do the
same.
So this is one of the area I'm going to
talk about in this conference, but then I
will jump, if it's okay with you, to
another area which is related to my main
practice as a clinical psychologist.
Kim Mills: Okay, but before we get too far
into that, a couple questions about motion
sickness.
So you talked about an artificial horizon.
So I'm in an autonomous car
there's a real horizon out there.
So why does that not prevent
me from getting motion sick?
What's happening?
Or, if you just gave me a steering wheel
and I thought I was in control, would I
feel better?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Well,
that's a very interesting...
You have two points here.
Both of them are good.
But let's go to the second one which I
was just trying in my clinic in Israel.
I wondered what happens if you have a
wheel, but you don't really control it,
you just play with it, like what I did
with my child when he was some years ago.
And, apparently, we don't have good
research about it yet, but apparently it
does help.
So, you know, in this autonomous
car there's going to be some stages.
At the beginning, we will still need the
wheel although it would not really control
the car.
So I do suggest that people will kind of
play with a useless wheel just to feel
that they have perceived control.
Regarding your previous question.
It is true, the main focus is that we
need to give them a good visual reference.
If the car manufactuer will be wise
enough, they will make big windows and
that would be best.
But if you will notice in the diagram of
how they prepare or plan those cars, they
are going to be like a room with many
chairs facing each other, not facing the
movement, and a lot of screens.
So people might not see the visual
surrounding and this is why, I'm kind of,
I think that they will have
to hear us psychologists.
Our voice must be heard on these issues.
Kim Mills: Is that a problem so far with
the cars that they're designing or are you
hearing that car sickness is an issue?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Well, you see,
everybody is now obsessed with the issue
of shall they do accident or not
and not enough about this issue.
Well, there is, I should be more concrete.
Mercedes Benz is doing some research
and other companies are doing research.
So it's not that they ignore it.
But still the main focus is not
exactly on this issue, I think.
There's another issue I should mention,
it's again important for psychologists,
the issue of trust.
We have to trust this
computer that will drive us.
And it will be interesting to see what
type of people will be kind of trusting
it.
No problem.
And others who should sit anxious and
anxiety might produce even more sickness.
So there are interesting questions here.
Kim Mills: Hmm.
So, why is it that some people get
seasick or carsick and others don't?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: That's
again a good question.
Some people thought its related to the
function of their vestibular system, this
in the inner ear, and apparently not.
Everybody that has a functional
vestibular system might get sick.
In our Navy my data so that 70% of the
people get seasick if the sea is high
enough.
In the car.
It might be a little bit less.
It might be less.
But again, if they will be reading and
looking on certain devices, they will be
apparently, either not sick, or they
will have what they call Sopite syndrome.
Sopite syndrome is related to what I
said about some type of lethergy, apathy,
depression that we did show that motion
sickness does produce even without nausea.
Kim Mills: So that's produced, it's not
something that you have before you get
motion sick.
It's when after you become motion
sick, you have this Sopite syndrome.
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: That's
an interesting question.
I studied with three of the
leading people in this field.
One is [inaudible] from England.
The other is Ashton Graybiel from Florida.
And the third is James Lackner
in Brandeis University.
They were all studying
this Sopite syndrome.
And they say that sometimes it develops
even without the symptoms of motion
sickness.
Like we can see it as a phenomena that
might be developed without nausea and
without vomiting.
Kim Mills: Interesting.
So you talked a little bit about
cognitive behavioral therapy as one way to
counteract motion sickness.
How exactly would that work?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Well in my studies
again some earlier studies and some later.
We trained soldiers or Sailors with some
cognitive, simple cognitive behavioral
techniques.
It could be either relaxation
either changing their cognition.
And we showed that people that did it and
the people that had high self-control,
were by far, they perform better than
their counterparts or the other sailors
that did not have self-control ability.
We used the classical method of measuring
self-control and we were able to show that
cognitive ability of self-control
might be very useful.
Now I should mention here a very important
figure his named Dobie, James Dobie I
believe, who worked in the naval
biodynamic lab here in this country.
And he just published a book about his, I
am speaking about 40 years, I think he's
working 50 years in the field, and he's
not psychologist, but what he found that
in order to help, pilots, sailors and
people that suffer from motion sickness he
uses cognitive behavioral therapies and
there is another study that people did it
in the sea just some years
ago with very good results.
So, yes we, you know people in the field
of cognitive behavioral therapy usually
think that their job is to prevent drivers
rage of drivers anger or, you know,
anxiety or depression.
I invite our colleague in the CBT to begin
to prepare themselves to a new arena that
they should work and this is
how to help people at the cars.
And more important motion
sickness is very much conditioned.
Like if I'm driving in a car and in this
car there is a smell, some type of smell
that usually wouldn't bother me.
This smell is kind of
conditioned with the nausea.
This is the phenomena we
all know in Psychology.
We called conditioned taste aversion
and conditioned smell aversion.
So it is possible again that we
might also test the role of odors.
And maybe we can prevent this conditioning
by using different odors at the first
drive or the first voyage
that they people are doing.
Kim Mills: So you'd associate
a good odor with feeling well.
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Exactly, exactly, but
may I now go to the other field that, I'm
like, I began with the old ancient
problem, but now I'm dealing a lot with
the role of the internet
in helping people.
And in fact in Psychology, there are
two directions that the internet took.
One is to do what they call Skype
therapy or online video conference.
And this is mainly the relational people
of the psychodynamic people that were
said, hey, it's interesting to see what
we can learn about therapy when we do it
online.
Is it the same therapy?
Is that the same alliance that is
produced in this online therapy?
And I just published a book with Heim
Weinberger, a friend of mine, about online
therapy.
There is some books in this area but our
book is dealing with cases that we are
doing it, not only one-on-one like
classical psychotherapy, we're doing it
with couples, with families, with
groups, and with organizations.
So this is the uniqueness of our book
that we are doing online therapy and that
produces very interesting questions.
For example, now, there's two people
sitting in front of me, you and our
technician.
And suppose I want to see the
interaction between the two of you.
Now the classical people just put the guy
or the couple before the camera, before
the computer, and we just see two faces.
It's not what we want.
We want to see the full body.
We want to see the interaction
between the couple.
What happens when the wife says something
that bothers the male or vice versa.
We want to see their bodily behavior.
So we did develop some new way that we
think new cameras that can go from one to
the other and the couple then can also see
where I'm looking, although I am in Israel
and the couple let's say is in the United
States, we found the cameras that could
represent my head.
And now my head is showing like the camera
is looking on you and now the camera is
looking on our nice technician here.
So I'm speaking about a lot of things that
we are testing now regarding this online
therapy.
Kim Mills: So is the therapist controlling
the cameras and then the people who are
the patients they're able to see
themselves at the same time or afterwards.
How exactly does that work?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Well, the
people can see themselves.
That's another interesting question and
in Skype and Zoom and all of the other
programs people can see themselves and
sometimes it produces some, too much,
people are too much self-aware.
But your question is very important.
Yes, we found a way that the therapist
from a distance can control the camera
which exists in the couple's room.
And in this way, it makes it
somewhat more like a real therapy.
You know in couples therapy we usually
need to kind of approach the male and tell
him, hey, please calm down.
We might approach the the female and
tell her could you invite him in more?
So it is, we are like a conductor
of an orchestra and we cannot do it.
Or we couldn't do it till we develop this
technique where we can really give the
couple the feeling that we are either
looking on one of them or the other.
So that's one direction that we are
doing with online therapy, but that's not
enough.
I think that we need, not to, it's not
enough to be happy that we are doing a
good online therapy.
What happens between one
session to the other session?
Usually in psychotherapy, psychotherapy
is a wonderful experience, people love it.
If we are a good psychotherapist, the
patient feels that you understanding him.
The patient feels that you are
helping him to accept himself.
The patient might feel some hope.
It's a wonderful thing, but it's a fantasy
that we can think that in one session a
week or two sessions a week.
We can really do a significant change.
So we developed an application that is
kind of accompanying the subject, or the
patient, all the week.
Suppose we were talking about, let's
say my arousal now speaking in this
conference, and I will come to my
therapist and I say, I was a little bit
too,
I don't know, exhausted.
And suppose the therapist say, listen
Arnon, it's okay, you can take a breath
and you can kind of think differently, you
know cognitive, but that's not enough what
will happen when I'm going to
be interviewed tomorrow on CBS.
It might happen again.
So our point is that we will, between
sessions, we produced an application that
remind me to do what we discussed.
It could be some types of what we call in
CBT homework, but it could also be some
type of, hey Arnon why won't you, this
program kind of accompany would say, why
won't you share with
me some of your dreams?
Or some of the thoughts that you
had in the middle of the week.
So our idea is to produce, we produced
application that is accompanying the
subject between sessions.
It also measures our
anxiety, our depression.
So there is a constant measure of the
patient's situation, patient's well-being,
and that helps the therapist to be aware
what's happening and if the therapy is
going well or not.
Kim Mills: So how is it
measuring these things?
Is it like testing your skin conductance,
or your heart rate, or I mean, what
exactly is it doing?
And like is you set it so that every day
at 3 o'clock it reminds you, like now is
the time for you to be mindful and
deep breathe and all those good things?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Yes.
Reminder is of course one
very important aspect.
We came from the biofeedback field,
all of our, it's not only me, it's Dr.
[inaudible] and [inaudible] who
is kind of developing this system.
So we are very much aware of this
psychophysiology and the sensor, but at
this stage we are more focusing really on
on some interaction between the patient
and the therapist.
And it goes automatically, the therapist
does not have to be aware, hey what
happens to my patient who now in Tel Aviv?
The system sends him a message, a message
that is designed with the therapist and
the patient.
Let's say this week we are going to focus
on your ability to think differently or
your ability to initiate
more social activities.
So it's, so coming back to a question,
it's not mainly sensors, although we have
developed some ideas about sensors,
but at this stage it is more verbal.
Kim Mills: So you think that's where
Psychotherapy is going or is this going to
be just an adjunct to traditional therapy?
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: I think we
psychologists are now divided into two
camps.
There is the camp who says
this is not psychotherapy.
We are not allowed to do it.
The main issue in psychotherapy is the
human interaction and they say completely
don't do that.
There is the other camp who says
if it works why won't we do it.
In my clinic we decided to combine the two
camps and what we're doing, is really,
we are doing a lot of online therapy and,
coming back to your
question, we are going there.
Now the genie is out of the bottle.
Now we could use it in a positive
way or in a negative way.
I've just been in New York and I've seen
Aladin and we could see that there was
happy ender and I do hope that in our case
there will also be some happy end, namely
that psychotherapy can really advance
using both online video conference and
online applications that
can enhance the therapy.
Kim Mills: Well it sounds like you're
doing a lot of really interesting work in
your clinic.
I'm very happy that you were able to join
us today and appreciate your taking the
time and we'll keep an eye on your work.
I'm sure people who experience things like
sea sickness and car sickness are going to
be very concerned as we have more and
more of these autonomous cars out there.
So I hope that your work is able to save
those of us who get a little queasy from
experiencing that.
Arnon Rolnick, PhD: Well, thank you and if
people are interested in our work will be
published on a site called
internet psychology.
And, sorry, internetpsychotherapy.org.
Internet Psychotherapy one word dot-org.
Kim Mills: Great.
That's good to know.
We can include that in our notes.
So before we go, I just wanted to remind
our listeners that we at Speaking of
Psychology want to hear from you.
You can email your comments and ideas
to speakingofpsychology@apa.org.
That's speaking of psychology
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I'm Kim Mills with the American
Psychological Association.
Thank
you.
