Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training for Young Adults with High-Functioning Autism

By Michelle Kandalaft, Nyaz Didehbani, Daniel C. Krawczyk, Tandra T. Allen, Sandra Chapman. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2012

630 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Few evidence-based social interventions exist for young adults with high-functioning autism, many of whom encounter significant challenges during the transition into adulthood. The current study investigated the feasibility of an engaging Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training intervention focused on enhancing social skills, social cognition, and social functioning. Eight young adults diagnosed with high-functioning autism completed 10 sessions across 5 weeks. Significant increases on social cognitive measures of theory of mind and emotion recognition, as well as in real life social and occupational functioning were found post-training. These findings suggest that the virtual reality platform is a promising tool for improving social skills, cognition, and functioning in autism.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Mental health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/25d943fa630389e7d7b4625c6fd9d15e5b882157

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Sarah Parsons
2. Fengfeng Ke
3. Tami Im

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Sarah Parsons
2. Sandra Chapman
3. Fengfeng Ke
4. Daniel C. Krawczyk
5. Tandra T. Allen
6. Michelle Kandalaft
7. Nyaz Didehbani
8. Tami Im

In Psychiatry and Mental health

1. Sarah Parsons

Citations in the corpus

• How Virtual Reality Technology Has Changed Our Lives: An Overview of the Current and Potential Applications and Limitations (2022, background): “These programs train users to better recognize facial expressions, body language, and emotions from a person’s voice [54].”
• A Literature Overview of Virtual Reality (VR) in Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: Recent Advances and Limitations (2019, background): “The University of Texas has developed a training program to assist in the social skills training of autistic children (65).”
• Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training for children with high functioning autism (2016, background): “They noted that " online " social cognition involves an integrative understanding of social perception and reciprocal communication, which is difficult for students with HFA who often succeed at " offline " social cognitive tasks (i.e., making social judgments based on static stimuli or observation)”
• Virtual-Reality-Based Social Interaction Training for Children with High-Functioning Autism (2013, background): “…three-dimensional VR can be employed as a promising learning platform to enhance social interaction performance for children with autism (e.g., Beaumont & Sofronoff, 2008; Cheng & Ye, 2010; Kandalaft et al., 2012; Mitchell et al., 2007; Parsons & Cobb, 2011; Parsons, Mitchell, & Leonard, 2004).”
• Authenticity in virtual reality for assessment and intervention in Autism: a conceptual review (2016, background): “In contrast to the studies involving agent-avatars, Kandalaft et al. (2013) and Ke and Im (2013) included human-avatars in their VEs.”