SoundFields: A Virtual Reality Game Designed to Address Auditory Hypersensitivity in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
SoundFields: A Virtual Reality Game Designed to Address Auditory Hypersensitivity in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
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DOI：
10.3390/app10092996
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发表时间：
2020-05-01
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
Kearney, Gavin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Johnston, Daniel;Egermann, Hauke;Kearney, Gavin
自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)的特征是在社会情感互动和沟通方面存在障碍，同时表现出重复的行为和兴趣。此外，他们在处理感觉信息时经常会遇到困难，尤其是在听觉领域。听觉过敏症通常由日常环境声音触发，会引发自我调节的恐惧反应，如哭泣和与声音隔绝。本文介绍了SoundFields，这是一款交互式虚拟现实游戏，旨在通过将基于暴露的治疗技术整合到游戏机制中，并通过基于双耳的空间音频向玩家提供目标听觉刺激来解决这一问题。对六名被诊断患有自闭症的参与者进行了一项初步研究，他们对特定声音表现出超敏反应，以评估SoundFields作为一种工具的使用，以降低与识别的有问题的声音相关的焦虑水平。在调查过程中，参与者每周玩游戏超过四周，所有参与者都积极参与虚拟现实(VR)环境，并享受玩游戏的乐趣。在这一时期之后，研究前后的测量结果显示，与目标听觉刺激相关的焦虑显著减少。因此，研究结果表明，声场可以成为帮助自闭症患者管理听觉过敏症的有效工具。
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterised as having impairments in social-emotional interaction and communication, alongside displaying repetitive behaviours and interests. Additionally, they can frequently experience difficulties in processing sensory information with particular prevalence in the auditory domain. Often triggered by everyday environmental sounds, auditory hypersensitivity can provoke self-regulatory fear responses such as crying and isolation from sounds. This paper presents SoundFields, an interactive virtual reality game designed to address this area by integrating exposure based therapy techniques into game mechanics and delivering target auditory stimuli to the player rendered via binaural based spatial audio. A pilot study was conducted with six participants diagnosed with ASD who displayed hypersensitivity to specific sounds to evaluate the use of SoundFields as a tool to reduce levels of anxiety associated with identified problematic sounds. During the course of the investigation participants played the game weekly over four weeks and all participants actively engaged with the virtual reality (VR) environment and enjoyed playing the game. Following this period, a comparison of pre- and post-study measurements showed a significant decrease in anxiety linked to target auditory stimuli. The study results therefore suggest that SoundFields could be an effective tool for helping individuals with autism manage auditory hypersensitivity.