The use and understanding of virtual environments by adolescents with autistic spectrum disorders.
VR cafés show teens with autism stand too close, giving you a safe place to teach better spacing.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Sarah et al. (2004) asked teens with autism to walk through a virtual café on a computer.
They compared how the teens moved and stood to teens without autism who had the same IQ.
The task was simple: pick up a coffee cup and walk to a table without bumping into people.
What they found
Both groups could finish the VR errand just as well.
The teens with autism, however, stood too close to the virtual people more often.
This shows they can learn tech tasks, but social spacing is still hard for them.
How this fits with other research
Candini et al. (2017) later watched the same age group in real rooms and saw the same wide spacing.
Their live data back up the VR finding, so the problem is not just a screen issue.
Chen et al. (2015) went further and used AR glasses to teach facial emotions to teens with autism.
They showed that immersive tech can also fix social skills, not just reveal the gaps.
Hsu et al. (2017) used an avatar interviewer and found kids with autism talked better to the cartoon than to a person.
Together these studies say: tech is both a mirror and a coach for social trouble.
Why it matters
You can drop a teen with autism into a VR cafeteria today and spot spacing errors in minutes.
Use that safe space to rehearse standing an arm’s length away before the real lunch bell rings.
Pair the drill with short video models shown by McCauley et al. (2018) to boost chat bids.
The tools are cheap, repeatable, and never tire of replaying the scene.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The potential of virtual environments for teaching people with autism has been positively promoted in recent years. The present study aimed to systematically investigate this potential with 12 participants with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), each individually matched with comparison participants according to either verbal IQ or performance IQ, as well as gender and chronological age. Participants practised using a desktop 'training' virtual environment, before completing a number of tasks in a virtual café. We examined time spent completing tasks, errors made, basic understanding of the representational quality of virtual environments and the social appropriateness of performance. The use of the environments by the participants with ASDs was on a par with their PIQ-matched counterparts, and the majority of the group seemed to have a basic understanding of the virtual environment as a representation of reality. However, some participants in the ASD group were significantly more likely to be judged as bumping into, or walking between, other people in the virtual scene, compared to their paired matches. This tendency could not be explained by executive dysfunction or a general motor difficulty. This might be a sign that understanding personal space is impaired in autism. Virtual environments might offer a useful tool for social skills training, and this would be a valuable topic for future research.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2004 · doi:10.1023/b:jadd.0000037421.98517.8d