Children on the Autism Spectrum and the Use of Virtual Reality for Supporting Social Skills

Frolli, Alessandro; Savarese, Giulia; Carmine, Francesca Di; Bosco, Antonia; Saviano, Emilio; Rega, Angelo; Carotenuto, Marco; Ricci, Maria Carla

doi:10.3390/children9020181

Cited by 53 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…A study Frolli et al ( 119 ) examined two types of interventions for enhancing social skills: i) emotional training achieved through VR and (ii) conventional emotional training conducted alone with a therapist. For the suggested social tasks, they sought to determine the intervention with the quickest acquisition time.…”

Section: Autism Spectrum Disordermentioning

confidence: 99%

A systematic review: Virtual-reality-based techniques for human exercises and health improvement

Ali

Wang

et al. 2023

Front. Public Health

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Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a new safe and efficient tool for the rehabilitation of many childhood and adulthood illnesses. VR-based therapies have the potential to improve both motor and functional skills in a wide range of age groups through cortical reorganization and the activation of various neuronal connections. Recently, the potential for using serious VR-based games that combine perceptual learning and dichoptic stimulation has been explored for the rehabilitation of ophthalmological and neurological disorders. In ophthalmology, several clinical studies have demonstrated the ability to use VR training to enhance stereopsis, contrast sensitivity, and visual acuity. The use of VR technology provides a significant advantage in training each eye individually without requiring occlusion or penalty. In neurological disorders, the majority of patients undergo recurrent episodes (relapses) of neurological impairment, however, in a few cases (60–80%), the illness progresses over time and becomes chronic, consequential in cumulated motor disability and cognitive deficits. Current research on memory restoration has been spurred by theories about brain plasticity and findings concerning the nervous system's capacity to reconstruct cellular synapses as a result of interaction with enriched environments. Therefore, the use of VR training can play an important role in the improvement of cognitive function and motor disability. Although there are several reviews in the community employing relevant Artificial Intelligence in healthcare, VR has not yet been thoroughly examined in this regard. In this systematic review, we examine the key ideas of VR-based training for prevention and control measurements in ocular diseases such as Myopia, Amblyopia, Presbyopia, and Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer, Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Epilepsy and Autism spectrum disorder. This review highlights the fundamentals of VR technologies regarding their clinical research in healthcare. Moreover, these findings will raise community awareness of using VR training and help researchers to learn new techniques to prevent and cure different diseases. We further discuss the current challenges of using VR devices, as well as the future prospects of human training.

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Section: Autism Spectrum Disordermentioning

confidence: 99%

A systematic review: Virtual-reality-based techniques for human exercises and health improvement

Ali

Wang

et al. 2023

Front. Public Health

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“…While VR technology is explored in supporting wellbeing of older adults in long-term care homes, 5,6 relatively limited research has addressed its use for social skills training 7 with the exception of social skill training for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. [8][9][10] Considerable innovation is needed to develop and test individual and societal interventions to reduce the number of people living in social isolation. 11 Social isolation, which is defined as 'an objective lack of interactions with others or the wider community,' is linked to worse health outcomes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a social skills training programme to target social isolation using virtual reality technology in primary mental health care

Ose

Thaulow

Færevik

et al. 2023

Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineerin

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Introduction People with severe mental illness often have a small or no network of friends and limited contact with their family and live social isolated lives. We developed a social skills training programme to be administered by public mental health professionals in helping those with mental illness to overcome their social isolation. Methods The programme was developed over 3 years in close collaboration among psychologists, service users, municipal mental health professionals, mental health service researchers and a local firm providing virtual reality (VR) training. We started with the simplest available equipment, that is, a cardboard headset combined with a smartphone, then we used Oculus Quest and now Oculus Quest 2. Results The resulting programme is comprised of eight steps from: 1) identify service user’s primary and secondary goals to 8) three-month follow-up. Conclusion Several factors made adoption and implementation of VR technology possible in a relatively short timeframe: namely, the municipality and service users were involved from the beginning of the development process, efforts were made to introduce VR to mental health professionals and allow them to reflect on its usability, solutions were low-tech and low cost, and the long-term research collaboration was established without municipal financial obligations.

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“…VR systems generally consist of a head-mounted display and screen so that the therapy can be conducted in a relatively low spatial limitation. Although no study has used VR to investigate social interaction skills in children with ADHD, previous studies have advocated the use of VR-based social skills training for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) [ 18 - 20 ]. Most of the studies about children with ASD also included some real-life scenarios—for example, classrooms, transportation, and supermarkets—in their social skills training program.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of Social Virtual Reality Training in Enhancing Social Interaction Skills in Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Protocol for a Three-Arm Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Wong,

Qin

2023

JMIR Res Protoc

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Background Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders among children. Children with ADHD have challenges in understanding social cues and behavioral problems when entering a social setting. Virtual reality (VR) has been applied to improve cognitive behaviors in children with ADHD. Previous studies have not adopted VR to improve social interaction competence and appropriateness in children with ADHD. VR offers a more effective alternative to therapeutic strategies for children with ADHD. Objective This study aims to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of social VR training in enhancing social interaction skills compared to traditional social skills training in children with ADHD. We hypothesize that participants in the social VR training group are likely to perform better on social interaction skills than those in the traditional social skills training group. Methods In this nonblinded, 3-arm randomized controlled trial (RCT), 90 participants with ADHD recruited from the community will be randomized 1:1:1 to the social VR intervention group, traditional social skills training group, or waitlist control group. The child psychiatrist will conduct assessments for each participant at baseline and after the intervention. The Social Skills Rating Scale–Parent will be used to assess the social interaction skills of the participants before and after the intervention. Participants in the social VR intervention group and traditional social skills training group will receive twelve 20-minute training sessions for 3 weeks. The participants in the waitlist control group will receive no training. The primary outcome measure is training acceptability and compliance. The secondary outcome measures are the child psychiatrist's assessment and the Social Skills Rating Scale–Parent before and after the intervention. Another outcome measure is the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function and Attention. Differences in the scale scores will be examined using a t test and an F test. Results This study is set to commence in the fourth quarter of 2023. It is anticipated that participants in the social VR intervention group will exhibit superior social interaction skills than those in the traditional social skills training group. Conclusions To our knowledge, this RCT is the first study examining the feasibility and effectiveness of a social VR-based intervention for enhancing the social interaction skills of children with ADHD in Hong Kong. The VR-based social skills training is expected to provide a safer and more effective environment for children with ADHD to learn than the traditional approach. This study can lead to a full-scale RCT. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05778526; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05778526 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/48208

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Children on the Autism Spectrum and the Use of Virtual Reality for Supporting Social Skills

Cited by 53 publications

References 46 publications

A systematic review: Virtual-reality-based techniques for human exercises and health improvement

A systematic review: Virtual-reality-based techniques for human exercises and health improvement

Development of a social skills training programme to target social isolation using virtual reality technology in primary mental health care

Effectiveness of Social Virtual Reality Training in Enhancing Social Interaction Skills in Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Protocol for a Three-Arm Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

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