Evaluation of an Immersive Virtual Reality Safety Training Used to Teach Pedestrian Skills to Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder
VR training lets young kids with autism master safe street crossing and use the skill on real roads.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three kids with autism, learned to cross the street using a VR headset.
The headset showed busy streets. Kids practiced looking left, right, and stepping only when no cars came.
Training happened in a quiet room. After VR mastery, staff took the kids to real streets to test if the skill stuck.
What they found
All three kids hit 100 % safe crossings in VR within 6 to 10 short sessions.
When they walked to real streets, they kept the skill. No extra teaching was needed.
Parents said the kids now stopped at every curb without being told.
How this fits with other research
Costa et al. (2020) used the same VR gear with older teens and adults. They taught police talks, not street crossing. Together, the two studies show VR works across ages and safety topics.
Levesque-Wolfe et al. (2021) taught abduction safety without VR. Both papers got strong results, so you can pick VR or real-life drills based on your setting and budget.
Jonsson et al. (2016) warned that many autism studies leave out key details. DPatton et al. (2020) answered that call by testing in both VR and real streets, giving clear transfer data.
Why it matters
You can now add a VR headset to your safety toolkit. One 15-minute VR session can replace hours of risky real-street practice. Start with VR, then do two quick real-street checks to lock the skill in place.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Run one 10-minute VR street-crossing module, then walk the child to the nearest crosswalk for a live test.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at an increased risk of injury, making safety skills training essential. Whether such training is conducted in the natural environment or in contrived settings is an important consideration for generalization and safety purposes. Immersive virtual reality (VR) environments may offer the advantages of both contrived and natural environment training settings, providing structure to create repeated learning opportunities in a safe and realistic analogue of the natural environment. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of an immersive VR safety skills training environment in teaching 3 children with ASD to identify whether it is safe to cross the street. After modifications to the VR training environment, all 3 participants reached mastery criteria in both VR and natural environment settings. Findings suggest that immersive VR is a promising medium for the delivery of safety skills training to individuals with ASD.
, 2020 · doi:10.1007/s40617-019-00401-1