Augmented Reality for Learning of Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A Systematic Review

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of relevant primary studies on the use of augmented reality (AR) to improve various skills of children and adolescents diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) from years 2005 to 2018 inclusive in eight bibliographic databases. This systematic review attempts to address eleven specific research questions related to the learing skills, participants, AR technology, research design, data collection methods, settings, evaluation parameters, intervention outcomes, generalization, and maintenance. The social communication skill was the highly targeted skill, and individuals with ASD were part of all the studies. Computer, smartphone, and smartglass are more frequently used technologies. The commonly used research design was pre-test and post-test. Almost all the studies used observation as a data collection method, and classroom environment or controlled research environment were used as a setting of evaluation. Most of the evaluation parameters were human-assisted. The results of the studies show that AR benefited children with ASD in learning skills. The generalization test was conducted in one study only, but the results were not reported. The results of maintenance tests conducted in five studies during a short-term period following the withdrawal of intervention were positive. Although the effect of using AR towards the learning of individuals was positive, given the wide variety of skills targeted in the studies, and the heterogeneity of the participants, a summative conclusion regarding the effectiveness of AR for teaching or learning of skills related to ASD based on the existing literature is not possible. The review also proposes the research taxonomy for ASD. Future research addressing the effectiveness of AR among more participants, different technologies supporting AR for the intervention, generalization, and maintenance of learning skills, and the evaluation in the inslusive classroom environment and other settings is warranted.

Exploring the Impact of Augmented Reality in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

“…Despite the promising results of the application of AR in interventions in children and adolescents with ASD, at present time, only two previous reviews [ 15 , 16 ] about ASD and AR have been carried out. A recent review focused on the use of AR for intervention in people with ASD [ 15 ].…”

“…Only 16 studies were identified, and many of them were presentations to congresses. Likewise, the review by Khowaja et al [ 16 ] provided the state-of-the-art research regarding studies utilizing AR for children and adolescents with ASD to learn different skills. These recent reviews on the application of augmented reality (AR) technologies in ASD highlight the need for a better evidence base for the utility of AR in treatment and rehabilitation of individuals with special needs.…”

Realidad aumentada y estimulación de la competencia socio-comunicativa en sujetos con TEA

“…Los 26 estudios seleccionados se han agrupado en función de los contextos de intervención en donde se han llevado a cabo: a) Educativo Los estudios ligados al ámbito educativo abordan la efectividad de determinados recursos didácticos apoyados en RA y adaptados a las necesidades del alumnado con TEA (Arief & Efendi, 2018;Chen et al, 2016;Kolomoiets & Kassim, 2018;Sahin et al, 2018a;Taryadi & Kurniawan, 2018). Otros indagan en la utilidad de la RA para facilitar el reconocimiento emocional y las habilidades sociales (Kellems et al, 2020), su autonomía (McMahon et al, 2012) e interacción social (Khowaja et al, 2020;Lee et al, 2018a).…”

“…Junto al de Keshav et al (2017) que analiza la usabilidad que ofrecen sistemas como Brain Power Autism System (BPAS) para personas con TEA. Finalmente, se incluyen la revisión sistemática de Khowaja et al (2020) centrada en analizar la potencialidad de la RA para desarrollar distintas competencias en el alumnado con TEA; y la de Adnan et al (2018) que reseña diferentes intervenciones con RA en personas de este colectivo.…”

“…Tampoco se describen exhaustivamente los procedimientos y fases inherentes a las intervenciones (número de sesiones, duración, etc. ), algo que también reclaman Khowaja et al (2020). No todos contemplan un grupo de control que permita establecer comparaciones entre los logros de aprendizaje de las personas del grupo experimental y los demás, al implementar los recursos con RA.…”