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Emily Gera, has reported on the success of research on Virtual Reality (VR) interventions for people with Autism.  As a father of a son with Autism and as a teacher of students with Autism, I appreciate the value of VR Interventions to create a safe and realistic space to practice social skills.

From the article in Variety –

“We found that students who received the virtual reality experienced increased in their understanding of social skills,” Rowland continues. ”This increase was significantly different from students that did not have access to the virtual reality experience. We also found that students who learned from the virtual reality experience were also able to generalize their understanding to non-virtual environments. Finally, students expressed a level of understanding and presence in the virtual reality experience enhancing the learning experience and understanding of the social skill being described and in which the student interacted.”

“There are a wide variety of social encounters that are based on our targeted users’ own social encounters,” she explains. “This includes both school-based encounters, like classrooms, cafeterias, and will soon include daily life encounters like movie theaters, sporting events, etc.”

“The social encounters vary in complexity based not only upon the user’s age and specific social need but also upon negative or positive feedback within the environments itself. If the user is progressing, the difficulty is increased to assure the user is always being challenged. In addition to the level of complexity of each situation, the situations are categorized, allowing for two-dimensional complexity optimization.”

“In theory, the more realistic and immersive, the less processing is required,” says [Justin Ehrlich, Ph.D.].

Read the full article here; https://variety.com/2018/digital/features/voiss-interview-vr-hmd-1203086576/