A study of how children with ASD respond inside a virtual reality room

Background:

Virtual reality (VR) technology has the potential to educate children with ASD but to date there has been little research into children’s responses to the content of VR programs and whether these responses differ from the experiences of typically developing children.

Objectives:

The aim of this study was to measure participant’s sense of presence  (the feeling of being located inside a virtual world) while they experience scenes projected into a virtual reality room. Our prediction was that the experiences of adolescents with ASD would not differ from those of typically developing adolescents.

Methods:

Ten participants with ASD and 13 typically developing IQ matched controls were shown 3 animated scenes (a busy road; a school playground; a school corridor) inside a virtual reality room and asked to complete simple tasks. The children then filled out the Sense of Presence Inventory (SoPI) from which a total score can be calculated, as well as domain scores for: 1. Spatial Presence, the feeling of being located in the virtual world; 2. Engagement, a sense of involvement with the content; 3. Ecological validity, how natural the content seemed; 4. Adverse effects, a measure of negative physiological responses (e.g. dizziness).

Results:

There were no significant differences between the two groups on total or domain scores from the SoPI. Questions on user-preference showed that 78% of all participants spontaneously reported liking the content or realism of the scenes; 13% reported disliking their physiological responses.

Conclusions:

Adolescents with ASD felt themselves located inside the virtual worlds in the same way as typically developing adolescents and there were no group differences in reports of negative physiological responses nor engagement with the content. These data show that adolescents with ASD respond typically to this VR technology, going some way to validating its future use in educating children with ASD.