Second Life-Based Autism Therapy Yields Meaningful Real Life Improvements in Social Abilities, Study Suggests

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain Health have been using SL as a therapy tool for people with autism since 2008, and now an academic paper just published online has the results. (Direct link to the paper here.) At Brain Health, SL was used to simulate a number of real world scenarios such as a therapists' office (see screenshot above, and video below), so someone with Asperger's (for example) could roleplay common day-to-day interactions from the security of their computer, through an avatar that he or she controlled, and then get guidance on improving their social interaction, to better prepare for doing the real thing. According to Dr. Michelle R. Kandalaft, lead author of "Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training for Young Adults with High-Functioning Autism", published in the Journal of Austim and Development Disorders, the results were highly promising:

"The progress of increasing social cognition as measured in our study was comparable to what other researchers are finding," Dr. Kandalaft tells me in e-mail. "[A]lthough it is not a great leap in skills, we feel that these changes are meaningful when it comes to improving social abilities."

However, she adds, it's one thing for someone to improve their social abilities in a virtual world, and applying the lessons they learned in real life:

"When it comes to generalizing," as she puts it, "how these changes in [virtual world behavior] scores relate to changes in life... it becomes more complicated. Typically generalization in autism research is limited as it is difficult for some of the ASD individuals to take understanding of a lesson and apply it to another lesson that doesn’t match exactly to the original lesson. We used an experimental survey, which has its limitations, and found that most of the participants reported that the virtual reality training helped them to improve different areas of their life." (Emphasis mine.) Overall then, the study's tentative conclusions seem quite positive; I hope we see more studies which measure long term benefits of virtual world therapy. Read about it in much more detail here.

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Comments

[Kadah Coba]

I know from first hand experience that it helps. Though it was unintended and not via any form of training methods like within the study.

[Emperor Norton]

from the virtual couch into a SL group near you.
It is nice they can help these people in SL, what isn't nice is the way they dump them into our SL role plays.

[Drew]

Let's make it clear: only diseases need therapy.

Asperger's and other mild forms of autism aren't diseases. I guess it's hard for some to accept differences.