Sense of presence and atypical social judgments in immersive virtual environments. Responses of adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
ASD teens feel present in VR yet miss which virtual people are socially desirable, so label the good guys for them.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wallace et al. (2010) put ASD and typical teens inside a VR world. Each teen met virtual people who acted either friendly or rude. After the session the teens rated how real the world felt and how much they liked each character.
The team wanted to know if ASD teens feel present in VR and if they notice which characters are socially desirable.
What they found
Both groups said the VR world felt equally real. That part was a tie.
When picking favorite characters, typical teens chose the friendly ones. ASD teens gave similar ratings to both nice and mean characters. They did not sort by social desirability.
How this fits with other research
Parsons et al. (2005) asked the same question five years earlier. They also saw mixed rule-following in VR, so the new study confirms the pattern.
Schwartz et al. (2010) moved the test to adults with ASD. Those adults felt less social contact and interest toward virtual characters, extending the teen finding into adulthood.
Matson et al. (2011) showed ASD teens need stronger facial cues to spot sadness. Together the papers point to one theme: people with ASD often need bigger or clearer social signals, whether in VR or in real faces.
Why it matters
If you use VR social training, know that clients with ASD will feel immersed, but they may not automatically pick the good role-model characters. Build in explicit labels such as friend or bully. Pause the scene and highlight the prosocial choices. This small tweak can turn VR time into clearer social lessons.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Before the next VR lesson, add a brief tag friend or not friendly when each character appears.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) are potentially powerful educational resources but their application for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is under researched. This study aimed to answer two research questions: (1) Do children with ASD experience IVEs in different ways to typically developing children given their cognitive, perceptual and sensory differences? and (2) Can an IVE accurately simulate ecologically valid social situations? Ten children with ASD and 14 typically developing (TD) adolescents all aged 12-16 years experienced three different IVEs. They completed self-report questionnaires on their sense of 'presence' in the IVEs and rated 'social attractiveness' of a virtual character in socially desirable and undesirable scenarios. The children with ASD reported similar levels of presence to their TD peers and no negative sensory experiences. Although TD adolescents rated the socially desirable character as more socially attractive than the undesirable character, adolescents with ASD rated the two characters as equally socially attractive. These findings suggest that children with ASD do not experience IVEs in different ways to their TD counterparts and that the IVEs are realistic enough to simulate authentic social situations. This study paints a very encouraging picture for the potential uses of IVEs in assessing and educating individuals with ASD.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2010 · doi:10.1177/1362361310363283