Improving autistic children's social skills using virtual reality

Abstract

This project presents an approach to improve autistic children's social and interactive behavior through involving them in an interactive virtual reality environment. The targeted group is in the age of 5 to 16 years. The environment to be simulated is a typical house. The autistic child will have the chance to move from one room to another and to engage in a series of activities related to each of these rooms. After each activity in each room, games will be presented to test the child's understanding and perception of the aforementioned activities. Using our developed software, the autistic children gaining improvement in their communication skills such as following commands, identifying vocabulary, linking the words to their meaning and eye contacts. They will also witness an improvement in learning the religious routines, daily habits, awareness of danger and awareness of surrounding environment. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.