Veridicality: Blending the Virtual with the Reality in Autism Research

Authenticity in Virtual Reality for assessment and intervention in Autism: A conceptual review

Literature Review

Parsons, S

Educational Research Review 19: (2016) 138 - 157

Link 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.

Xbox engagement and children with Autism

Design: Repeated-measures study
Exploring motion-based touchless games for Autistic children’s learning
Bartoli, L., Corradi, C., Garzotto, F. & Valoriani, M. Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference, June 24 – 27, 2013, New York, NY, USA

Link to abstract... http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2485774

Objective: Do children with autism increase in selective and sustained attention after motion-based video game play?

Method: A convenience sample of five 10 – 12 year old autistic boys were selected from a larger group of children at a therapeutic centre in Florence, Italy. The boys attended five “gaming meetings” of 45 minutes gameplay over a period of three months. Five Kinect Xbox 360 games were chosen in order to present the boys with a variety of short games with graded tasks. The Bells test for visual neglect, used here to measure attention, was administered before, during and one week after the treatment regime.

Results: Children showed increased selective and sustained attention up to seven days following the end of treatment sessions. These results “are in line with existing studies concerning the positive effects of motion-based games on engagement”.

Virtual reality in Autism: Subject review

Bellani, M., Fornasari, L., Chittaro, L., Brambilla, P.
"Virtual reality in autism: state of the art", Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 20(3): 235-238.

Link to the pre-print article
hcilab.uniud.it/publications/2011-03/VRInAutismEPS.pdf

Objective: This short article reviews eight “behavioural studies investigating VR in patients with Autism disorders and healthy subjects.”

Variations in the domains of social interaction, communication and repetitive behaviour characterize Autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Virtual reality or the creation of virtual environments is potentially useful as a treatment medium for ASD. Stimuli can be managed to permit focus on selected activities; concept learning and activity practice can occur repeatedly. And hopefully the environments are realistic enough to prompt transfer to real world interactions.

Findings: Several studies found positive improvements in because safe, repeatable diversifiable tool for learning. The eight studies found that when children can limit off-task behaviour, complete the tasks, they may improve performance. Two studies found that newly gained skills generalized outside the virtual environment.

Autism and video game engagement

Engagement with electronic screen media among students with autism spectrum disorders
Mineo, B. A., Zeigler, W., Gill, S. & Salkin, D. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (2009) 39:172-187

doi>10.1007/s10803-008-0616-0

 “Studies comparing the relative appeal and impact of technology-enabled interventions are few.” This study is concerned with the relative strength of engagement of four types of video-based content presented to a heterogeneous population of 42 children with autism.

The engaging quality of video-based media, combined with the preference for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) for screen media, suggest its suitability for delivering instructional material. Movies, video games and virtual reality (VR) games all exist in popular culture and can thus non-stigmatizing. Benefits of video presentation in comparison to live instruction include consistently presented, infinitely repeatable content. Screen media make good use of limited resources and can communicate visually, with or without language. Virtual reality puts the person into the game as an avatar, or some closer rendition of themselves. VR scenarios can represent unreal situations – ones that simulate impractical or dangerous real life situations. Like other video games,  tasks presented in the virtual environment can be graded to accommodate the learners’ ability and feedback sculpted to be effective for that learner.

Design

To reflect the heterogeneous nature of ASD, baseline data were collected using a basket of five communication characteristics, reported in a binary fashion. Expressive language may be understood to be a predictor of functioning in the ASD population. The primary metric in selecting candidates was having an expressive lexicon of greater than 50 words and 38 of 42 participants “passed” this criteria.. Other scales included receptive lexicon, frequency of conventional yes/no use, frequency of conversation, and frequency of echolalia. Additionally, informants reported on the participants attention to and previous experience of screen media.

Individuals were sequentially assigned to one of three groups: seeing themselves doing a familiar activity ( self video), seeing a familiar other in a video game (other VR), or seeing themselves as they played a virtual reality game (self VR). Measures of engagement included gaze duration and vocalizations during a two-minute presentation of  the various media. All participants watched a video movie clip to establish a baseline response level. Reliability across two raters was established. (94% for vocalizations, 86% for gaze). Scores were adjusted for baseline score, expressive language score, and age.

Findings: Gaze was significantly higher in the “self VR” condition (p = .014) than the “other VR” condition, possibly related to the novelty of the VR game, seeing themselves or being able to interact with the game. Vocalizations were significantly higher in the “other VR” condition (p = .03) than “self VR” condition due either to seeing a familiar person on the screen, seeing the game or a combination of the two. There were no other significant differences between groups. Possibly participants high attention to movie clips during the baseline exposure to a movie clip created a ceiling effect that limited the ability to demonstrate a difference compared to other conditions.

“While the study did not yield definitive data about the relative engagement potential of media alternatives it does provide a foundation for future research including  guidance related to participant profiles stimulus characteristics and data coding challenges.”

Link to article: www.udel.edu/cds/downloads/Mineo_J.AutismDev.Disord_2009.pdf