Desktop Virtual Reality Games

iSocial is a virtual game that is played on a desktop computer. It is a collaborative virtual learning environment and social interaction system for persons with autism, and is particularly useful if you live in a community with limited access to clinicians in the field of autism. iSocial uses social scenes and emotion-eliciting questions from social stories to create positive effects on social performance both within the program and outside of the learning environment. It will help your child with social performance and social competency skills.

It was analyzed by many authors:

• Cheng and Ye (2010) found that using iSocial for 17 days had significant positive effects on participants’ performance both within the system and in terms of reciprocal social interaction learning
• Wang and colleagues (2016) found that using iSocial to learn social competence helped youth to achieve embodied presence, embodied copresence, and embodied social presence in the learning activities
• Stichter and colleagues (2014) found iSocial was delivered with fidelity when used as a distance education program, and that the program shows promise for social competence benefits for youth

All of these studies had a strength rating of 1 due to a lack of randomization, inadequate blinding, and non-valid data collection measurements.

Download iSocial (Requires computer, with option to use VR goggles)

Second Life was originally developed for non-autistic persons, but has been studied for its ability to improve emotional recognition in children with ASD. It uses avatars in a virtual environment to display social scenarios. These scenarios can target social learning objectives such as meeting new people, dealing with a bully, bonding with friends, confronting conflict, consoling a friend, or handling social dilemmas.

Didehbani and colleagues (2016) examined the use of the game by 30 children with ASD using the above social scenarios. Their study reported statistical significance in improved emotional recognition. Likewise, Ke and Im (2013) have studied Second Life to help children with social interaction tasks, such as recognizing body gestures and facial expressions, responding and maintaining interactions at a school cafeteria, and initiating and maintaining interactions at a birthday party. The authors found that the program increased social performance during the intervention, and improved social competence after the intervention. Using this game with these types of tasks can help your child with their performance of responding, initiating, greeting, and positive conversation-ending. Both of these studies were given a strength rating of 1 due to lack of rigour in the study design.

Download Second Life (Requires computer, with option to use VR goggles)