Virtual Reality as an Intervention for Individuals Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Published in ASHA 2024, 2024
This is my wife Emilee’s master’s thesis, to which I contributed by developing the networked Unity software for the user studies.
The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is now 1 in 36 children (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). People with autism may exhibit differences in social skills, so researchers are analyzing a variety of interventions to understand which yield the best results to support evidence-based practice. Therapy often addresses social skills, including conversation, and research is needed to explore which interventions are most effective. Virtual reality (VR) has recently been studied as an intervention in allied health fields such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, nursing, and psychology, but few studies exist in the field of speech- language pathology. A VR intervention program was created to teach conversational skills to adolescents diagnosed with ASD. In this first study, the perceived applicability and usability of the program was described from the perspective of speech-language pathology graduate students, licensed speech-language pathologists, and other individuals who have experience communicating with people diagnosed with ASD.