EVALUATING VIRTUAL REALITY INSTRUCTION FOR AUTISM

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DESCRIPTION: The broad long term objectives of the project are to develop a virtual reality instructional aid for children with autism and document efficacy. The specific aims are: 1) build a prototype of a low cost commercially feasible virtual reality system that can be used in the classroom, 2) demonstrate the system's instructional potential to recognize the spoken names for common objects in their environment, 3) demonstrate that stills [sic] learned in the virtual world are generalized to the real world. The learning environment control afforded by virtual reality may allow improved skill training and communication assistance for individuals with mental retardation and developmental disorders, communication disorders, and other mental disorders. The research design and methods for achieving the goals are: (1) Children in the school system who have been diagnosed with autism will be chosen, (2) A low cost virtual reality system will be constructed from off-the-shelf equipment, (3) Software will be designed, coded, and tested to utilize unique features provided by virtual reality treatment, such as controlled input and feedback of the child's actions, (4) This instructional program will be tested using n, multiple baseline across subjects design, with generalization probes testing for generalization across instances of a concept and generalization to real world objects in the classroom.