May 15, 1995

NCSU Computer Engineer finds autistic children accept virtual reality

By exploring a virtual world, autistic children may one day learn to function in the real world, according to a successful study developed by a researcher in the N. C. State College of Engineering.

Dr. Dorothy Strickland, a computer engineer who recently completed her doctorate at NCSU, designed the project to test virtual reality (VR) as a learning tool. Autistic children were good subjects because of the limited range of therapies for them. "There are few techniques," Strickland said, "that effectively address the problem."

Autistic individuals suffer from a disorder that leaves them disconnected from their surroundings, unable to interact with others, and behaving compulsively and in rigid patterns. They also respond inappropriately to external stimuli and cannot generalize between environments. Teaching them coping strategies, therefore, is often difficult.

For these reasons, Strickland hypothesized that a virtual world would provide a safe learning environment for the test subjects. Computer-generated stimuli can be simpler than those in actual reality, and the individual is literally immersed in the created environment, able to move closer to or farther from objects in the scene.

Her objective with the pilot program was "to see how [autistic children] respond and to see if the technology is viable."

Another example of a VR therapeutic technique involves repeated exposures to heights to help acrophobics overcome their fears. The goal is to render the next encounter with a similar situation in the real world less traumatic and immobilizing.

Strickland»along with therapists and staff of the Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children (TEACCH) center, a division of the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill»designed a study in which children could learn to recognize an object in a scene, in this case a car moving down a street, and eventually move to another object, in this case a stop sign, and stop there.

The learned behavior she targeted was crossing a street alone. Teaching autistic children to do so in the real world, said Strickland, is dangerous.

Physical safety was not the only concern. The two children in the study, seven-year-old Shannon and nine-year-old Robbie, needed to feel at ease in the test environment, so the children's parents, siblings, and teachers participated.

For these children, the test could have been terrifying. They entered an unknown building»the facilities of Division Inc. of Chapel Hill, supplier of the program and equipment»and encountered an eight-pound visored helmet that could come straight out of a sci-fi movie. To make matters worse, autistic children resist wearing anything on their heads.

Strickland faced, then, a difficult problem: how would she get Shannon and Robbie to don the VR helmet?

Her solution was elegant. Strickland incorporated familiar play and work activities from school. Also, the subjects' older siblings tried out the apparatus first and demonstrated how much fun the helmet was while parents encouraged the autistic child to watch.

"Shannon's response was exciting. She appeared not to notice the helmet and immediately became absorbed in the virtual world," Strickland said. "Robbie resisted initially, but within the first fifteen minutes was reaching for the helmet to place it on his head."

The children were thus enticed but not forced to put on the helmet. If the child resisted, then the helmet was removed until another attempt could be made.

Each virtual experience lasted only five minutes so the children wouldn't be tired by the ponderous headgear. Over 6 weekends, they traveled into the virtual realm 40 times. There they found themselves on a sidewalk in a mostly gray city street scene with numerous buildings and only one moving object»a car. Because it was the focus of the experiment, the car was either red or blue, the only colors the children could recognize.

Each time Shannon and Robbie entered the scene, they were positioned at a different location on the sidewalk. Their task, however, was the same»find and identify the car and its color.

Because computer-generated sounds did not accompany the visual elements, the children were not distracted by aural stimulation. Thus the subjects clearly heard the voices of researchers giving simple instructions.

Strickland says learning new activities can require years of training with the conventional methods for teaching autistic children. Some actions, such as crossing a street alone, can be too dangerous to attempt outside a virtual world.

The results were astounding. Both children became so engrossed in the virtual world that they readily tracked the car, moved toward it, and named objects and colors to the best of their abilities when prompted. Shannon eventually moved to the stop sign and stopped.

"The acceptance of the virtual world by both children was encouraging although each responded in quite different ways," Strickland said. She added, "It was gratifying to see that the technology has the potential for aiding in this serious disorder."

Others may one day benefit as well. Strickland said the technology might prove useful for disorders requiring controlled input for treatment, among them Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). She also believes VR can find useful application in the schools as a tool for students with learning disabilities.

"With low-cost VR systems scheduled for the market soon," she said, "the hope is that the technology might be extended to provide a more readily available and cost effective treatment for other disorders."

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