How Virtual Reality is Helping Autism Patients
Although it has only recently gained attention, virtual reality-based therapy for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other sensory processing disorders is not exactly new. As early as 1996, renowned researchers such as Barbara Strickland theorized that virtual reality could help autistic individuals develop social awareness skills. Early studies by researchers in the 90s were promising, but at the time, virtual reality was expensive, and headsets were often bulky and uncomfortable — sometimes a serious problem for people with sensory disorders. For these reasons at the time, these issues prevented VR therapies from being an effective, widespread option for helping individuals with ASD.
Nowadays, virtual reality technology is cheap and accessible, and virtual reality headsets have become lighter and more comfortable. With these barriers removed, a new horizon has emerged for researchers to study the potential of virtual reality as a treatment tool for autism more than ever before. Of course, the scientific world moves slowly, and it will be years or even days before we have large-sample, long-term studies that can track the long-term effectiveness of VR-based therapy and training for our autistic individuals.
But much of the research has been successful, and virtual reality is already being used as a tool to improve the lives of people with autism. New research shows that VR can be used for everything from helping autistic children to helping autistic adults develop interview skills and land jobs.
A collaborative study by the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas and the Child Study Center at Yale University examined how virtual reality training affects the brains of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Before the collaboration, brain health had already performed preliminary studies on Virtual Reality-Social Cognition Training (VR-SCT). They developed VR scenarios to help high-functioning autistic people develop social skills like “emotional recognition” and “the ability to understand and respond to what others are thinking.” BrainHealth found as early as 2012 that “A virtual reality platform is a promising tool for improving social skills, cognition, and functioning in autism.”
Carly McCuller, a UT Dallas student who went through BrainHealth’s virtual reality program, credits the training with helping her learn interview skills and become a teacher and, perhaps, more importantly, with helping her find “real friends, lasting friends.”
And it turns out that there’s a scientific explanation for McCuller’s experience. Using fMRIs and EEGs, BrainHealth and Yale’s 2018 study confirmed that VR-SCT does indeed elicit measurable changes in the brains of people with high-functioning autism. Even though the virtual reality training was non-immersive (i.e., scenarios were displayed on a computer screen instead of through a virtual reality headset), the training helped patients pay relatively more attention to social stimuli and relatively less attention to non-social stimuli. Researchers theorize that “VR-SCT had made social events more predictable after treatment,” perhaps helping people with autism become less overwhelmed by extraneous stimuli in social situations and more able to focus on reading and responding to social cues.
But most research is promising, and virtual reality is already being used as a tool to help improve the lives of people with autism. New studies suggest that VR could have use for everything from helping autistic children overcome phobias to helping autistic adults develop interview skills and land jobs.
