Technology-Mediated Public Speaking Interventions for Educational Training and Anxiety Treatment: A Comprehensive Review
Public speaking training and public speaking anxiety (PSA) treatment increasingly rely on technology-mediated systems, including web, mobile, desktop, and immersive virtual reality (VR) tools. This comprehensive review identifies and maps information and communication technology (ICT)-based public speaking interventions for educational training and anxiety-oriented treatment, focusing on platform choice, audience simulation, feedback timing, physiological and behavioral sensing, therapeutic framing, practitioner involvement, and evaluation methods. A PRISMA-inspired process documented identification and screening across Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ERIC for English-language journal articles and conference papers published between 1 February 2015 and 1 February 2025. From 6602 records, 82 participant-validated studies were included. No formal risk-of-bias assessment was conducted. VR accounted for 82.93% of interventions, while research prototypes comprised 72.0% of the evidence base, demonstrating the field’s strong emphasis on immersive and experimental development. At the same time, 64.6% of interventions provided no automated feedback and 36.6% used no physiological or behavioral sensing, highlighting opportunities for more responsive and data-informed systems. The findings can guide the development of future public-speaking training and treatment systems by highlighting recurring design components, promising implementation patterns, and priorities for stronger comparative validation.