| 2011 | Parsons and Cobb22 | Review article | State of VR in education and training for autistic individuals | Children can learn information from VR and some can transfer this knowledge to the real world, especially when the skills are procedural and rule based |
| 2012 | Parsons23 | VR to enable the reciprocal interactions and communicative perspective-taking between children | Measured interactional moves and peer-to-peer communication in eight TD children and six with ASD in a collaborative VR game | ASD and TD groups exhibited equal communicative reciprocity. TD scored higher on sustained endeavors to communicate. Pairs of autistic individuals and TD individuals communicate in the collaborative VR game in similar ways. |
| 2016 | Didehbani et al.24 | VR social cognition training to enhance social skills in children with ASD | Thirty children participated in ten 1-hour sessions for 5 weeks while researchers measured emotion recognition, social attribution, attention and EF | Results revealed improvement across all measures and presents support for VR as a platform to offer effective social cognition training |
| 2016 | Lorenzo et al.25 | Immersive VR system to enhance emotional skills for children with ASD | Forty autistic students between 7 and 12 participated in four 35-minute sessions each month for 8 months. Each participant was exposed to numerous social situations (e.g., birthday parties, playground, and classroom). | Participants showed improvements in contextually appropriate behaviors throughout the 8-month period. VR helps students acquire and develop emotional competences with ASD. |
| 2016 | Zhao et al.26 | A communication-enhancement collaborative VR system for promoting social interaction | Twelve children with ASD and 12 TD children participated. Interactive VR games tasked participants with collaboratively moving virtual objects using gaze and voice-based communication to communicate, share information, and discuss game strategy. | Feasibility study results indicate that the VR system was accepted by both groups and improved their game play cooperation. There is potential for VR to foster communication and collaboration skills in children with ASD. |
| 2018 | Simões et al.27 | VR-based public transportation training for autistic children | Ten autistic children participated in one to three bus riding VR sessions for up to 15 minutes. Ten TD peers served as a control. Bus riding skills and physiology were monitored. | Significant improvements in autistic children’s knowledge of the bus riding process (skill acquisition), reduction of electrodermal activity (a metric of anxiety), and a 94% completion rate. VR can help people with ASD become more independent |
Source: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/cyber.2019.0093