Six teenagers with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) experienced a Virtual Environment (VE) of a café. They also watched three sets of videos of real cafés and buses and judged where they would sit and explained why. Half of the participants received their VE experience between the first and second sets of videos, and half experienced it between the second and third. Ten naïve raters independently coded participants' judgments and reasoning. In direct relation to the timing of VE use, there were several instances of significant improvement in judgments and explanations about where to sit, both in a video of a café and a bus. The results demonstrate the potential of Virtual Reality for teaching social skills.
The potential of virtual environments for teaching people with autism has been positively promoted in recent years. The present study aimed to systematically investigate this potential with 12 participants with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), each individually matched with comparison participants according to either verbal IQ or performance IQ, as well as gender and chronological age. Participants practised using a desktop 'training' virtual environment, before completing a number of tasks in a virtual café. We examined time spent completing tasks, errors made, basic understanding of the representational quality of virtual environments and the social appropriateness of performance. The use of the environments by the participants with ASDs was on a par with their PIQ-matched counterparts, and the majority of the group seemed to have a basic understanding of the virtual environment as a representation of reality. However, some participants in the ASD group were significantly more likely to be judged as bumping into, or walking between, other people in the virtual scene, compared to their paired matches. This tendency could not be explained by executive dysfunction or a general motor difficulty. This might be a sign that understanding personal space is impaired in autism. Virtual environments might offer a useful tool for social skills training, and this would be a valuable topic for future research.
The potential for using virtual environments (VEs) in educational contexts for people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) has been recognized. However, very little is known about how people with ASDs interpret and understand VEs. This study aimed to investigate this directly with a group of 12 adolescents with ASDs, each individually matched with comparison participants. Participants were presented with VEs to assess whether they adhered to particular social conventions, such as not walking across grass and flowerbeds en route to a café, or not walking between two people (ostensibly involved in conversation) en route to the bar. Whilst a significant minority of the ASD group adhered to the social conventions, others displayed substantial 'off-task' behaviour and a limited understanding of the VE. It is suggested that some individuals with an ASD, low verbal IQ and weak executive ability require the most support to complete tasks successfully in the VE.
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