Authenticity in Virtual Reality for assessment and intervention in Autism: A conceptual review
Literature Review Parsons, S Educational Research Review 19: (2016) 138 - 157Link to abstract http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/399407/
A challenge of behavioural research is how to create experimental, laboratory settings that relate to real world experiences. Virtual reality has the capability to provide a blend of experimental control and realistic scenarios; a characteristic is called veridicality.
This literature review looks at the way virtual reality veridicality is used to find the different factors affecting the social interactions of people with autism. The review findings fall into two main categories. Veridicality is a way of blending synthetic and realistic social scenarios to provide learning and a way that transfers knowledge and skills to the real world. It can also be a way of providing authentic but controlled social settings where responses can be assessed to help understand the autism difference.
Autism research in virtual reality will at best be made up using the best ideas of researchers, influenced by the perspective of people with autism spectrum disorder and leveraging the capabilities of veridicality.