Applied Virtual Environments to Support Learning of Social Interaction Skills in users with Asperger's Syndrome

Sue Cobb, Luke Beardon, Richard Eastgate, Tony Glover, Steven Kerr, Helen Neale, Sarah Parsons, Steve Benford, Eileen Hopkins, Peter Mitchell, Gail Reynard and John Wilson Digital Creativity, Vol 13, No 1 pp 11 - 22.

Successful social skills training appears to be best achieved either in situ or in role play situations where users can explore different outcomes resulting from their social behaviour. Single user virtual environments (SVEs) provide an opportunity for users with AS to learn social interaction skills in a safe environment which they can visit as many times as they like. The use of game like tasks can provide an incentive and can also be used to guide the user through progressive learning stages. Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) allow several users to interact simultaneously within the virtual environment, each taking different perspectives or role-play characters. Within the AS interactive project a series of SVEs and CVEs have been developed in collaboration with users and professional groups with an overall aim of supporting social skills learning. Initial evaluation studies have been carried out which have been used to both inform and refine the design of these virtual environments (Ves) as well as giving an insight into the understanding and interpretation of these technologies by users with AS.

Individuals with AS may experience social exclusion from their peers due to difficulties in making and sustaining friendships. The AS Interactive Project aims to address some of these issues by constructing social scenarios within virtual environments (Ves), which can be used to learn about and demonstrate social interaction skills in different situations. VE technology allows construction of realistic 3D representations of the real world environments, which can be interacted with and explored in real time. This means that we can create interactive contexts representing a range of social scenarios in which AS users can practice social skills. Furthermore, we can control the parameters within the environment, (e.g. number of people, cues within the environment, number of solutions to a given problem, etc). This allows us to control the number of available options and therefore the decisions that need to be made by the user.

The AS Interactive Project is a three-year project funded by the Shirley Foundation to develop single user (SVE) and collaborative (CVE) virtual environments for adolescents and adults with AS to learn social skills relevant to social interaction in public situations, particularly work-based situations. The project has two distinct phases of research. The initial focus has been concerned with feasibility investigation of the use of virtual environment technology for social skills training and establishing the involvement training professionals and users in the design and review process.

In a CVE users can interact with others via navigation of their avatar and direct verbal communication using headset and microphones. This offers the facility to practise real conversations in a role-play scenario without the added intimidation of face-to-face contact. Our research has not yet progressed far enough for us to comment upon outcomes from the role-play sessions in the CVE, this will be the focus of our next research phase, but early indications suggest that users like the technology and consider that it could be useful to support social skills learning. At the end of the first phase of study we can conclude that Ves are acceptable to users with AS and users do sometimes interpret Ves as being representative of real environments.