Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and interaction, which can have significant impacts on daily life, education, and work. Limited performance in learning and working, as well as exclusion from social activities, are common challenges faced by individuals with ASD. Virtual reality (VR) technology has emerged as a promising medium for delivering interventions for ASD. To address five major research questions and understand the latest trends and challenges in this area, a systematic review of 21 journal articles published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2022 was conducted using the PRISMA approach. A meta-analysis of 15 articles was further conducted to assess interventional effectiveness. The results showed that most studies focused on social and affective skill training and relied on existing theories and practices with limited adaptations for VR. Furthermore, the enabling technologies’ affordances for the interventional needs of individuals with ASD were not thoroughly investigated. We suggest that future studies should propose and design interventions with solid theoretical foundations, explore more interventional areas besides social and affective skill training, and employ more rigorous experimental designs to investigate the effectiveness of VR-enabled ASD interventions.
Mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders are common among children and young adults. They can negatively affect children's social behaviour, development, and performance in school. This chapter discusses three common mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders and how serious immersive games could support this group. Serious immersive games are games that are designed with a certain purpose in mind and make use of immersive technologies like virtual or augmented reality. As games are a vital element of youth culture, the authors claim that immersive game elements could be utilized to engage a larger group with the health system and offer safe and motivating environments. This chapter shows that work exists to explore the use of games or immersive technologies in mental health support. However, the authors also show that there are shortcomings in the current research and propose research directions to address those.
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