Evaluation of an Immersive Virtual Reality Safety Training Used to Teach Pedestrian Skills to Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

ABSTRACT

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at an increased risk of injury, making safety skills training essential. Whether such training is conducted in the natural environment or in contrived settings is an important consideration for generalization and safety purposes. Immersive virtual reality (VR) environments may offer the advantages of both contrived and natural environment training settings, providing structure to create repeated learning opportunities in a safe and realistic analogue of the natural environment. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of an immersive VR safety skills training environment in teaching 3 children with ASD to identify whether it is safe to cross the street. After modifications to the VR training environment, all 3 participants reached mastery criteria in both VR and natural environment settings. Findings suggest that immersive VR is a promising medium for the delivery of safety skills training to individuals with ASD.