Alejandro Lorenzo-Lledó

The application of immersive virtual reality for students with ASD: A review between 1990–2017

We live in a society where Technology has an important position in our diary activities. Everybody wants to have the last device to be in contact with his family and friends. Additionally, these took are being applied in other fields such as Education. One of these tools is: Virtual reality that can respond the need of our students. It allows the designer an important control of the system that can be useful for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. These students can use Virtual Reality as a support to practice social situation that can be generalized in real environments. Therefore, our research provides a state-of-the-art review of what studies have applied Immersive Virtual Reality to students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The sample of study has been 12 papers in the period 1996–2017. To analyse these research, it has been proposed these variables: participants’ features, research questions, instrument, type of activities, results, and limitations. These study variables have been chosen because they are the most repeated in all research using the experimental method. According to the results gathered: it has been worked with small sample, without control group and interactive activities. Moreover, the vast majority of the studies are focused on social skills.

Preliminary study of augmented reality as an instrument for improvement of social skills in children with autism spectrum disorder

Many studies have shown that children with Autism Spectrum Disorders show lack of skills using social and communication skills. However, they understand, assimilate and retain better information using virtual aids. Therefore, the objective of this study has been to assess the effectiveness of an augmented reality training program based on visual support for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder to improve their social skills. The investigation was carried out following a quantitative approach, quasi-experimental method and pretest posttest design with control group. Participants, were 11 individuals (10 male and one female) grouped into control (nu2009=u20095) and experimental group (nu2009=u20096). They were assigned using a non-probabilistic intentional sampling method. Likewise, the experimental group worked with different augmented reality activities such as a player who had to score a goal; playing with a cow. In contrast, control group received a similar intervention but without the use of this tool; for instance pick up the objects according to the therapist’s orders. The intervention lasted for 20xa0weeks, in 15xa0min sessions twice a week. The instrument for data collection was the Autistic Spectrum Inventory of Riviere. The Quicker Vision application was used as the AR-based intervention method. The results of the experiment do not show statistically significant differences between both groups, although slight improvements appear in some items. For example item 8 (flexibility) and item 11 (imitation). This indicates that in the future we could work on areas that have not been studied in other research. Nonetheless, it is necessary to develop a greater number of investigations in this aspect to obtain a better knowledge of its effects.