Virtual Reality for Social Skills Training of Children and Adolescents with ASD: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by an inability to identify facial expressions and recognize other people's emotions. Individuals with ASD would struggle to give appropriate answers and have effective communication in social interactions. As a result, children and adolescents with ASD are vulnerable to isolation at school and have fewer opportunities to develop social relationships with peers. Virtual Reality (VR) has been studied and widely used in education for quite a long time. It is evidenced as an effective tool in social skills training for children and adolescents with ASD by improving their emotion recognition ability and social reciprocity. Furthermore, by imitating real-world circumstances, VR can provide repeatable social scenarios for ASD children and adolescents to explore safely. This paper followed PRISMA systematic review design to analyze imperial studies on social skills training for children and adolescents with ASD. A total of 276 participants were analyzed in the five selected articles from two hundred and fifteen records. The result showed that VR was effective and feasible for social skills interventions in all five studies.