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      Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training for Young Adults with High-Functioning Autism

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          Abstract

          Few evidence-based social interventions exist for young adults with high-functioning autism, many of whom encounter significant challenges during the transition into adulthood. The current study investigated the feasibility of an engaging Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training intervention focused on enhancing social skills, social cognition, and social functioning. Eight young adults diagnosed with high-functioning autism completed 10 sessions across 5 weeks. Significant increases on social cognitive measures of theory of mind and emotion recognition, as well as in real life social and occupational functioning were found post-training. These findings suggest that the virtual reality platform is a promising tool for improving social skills, cognition, and functioning in autism.

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          Most cited references24

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          Virtual reality in psychotherapy: review.

          Virtual reality (VR) has recently emerged as a potentially effective way to provide general and specialty health care services, and appears poised to enter mainstream psychotherapy delivery. Because VR could be part of the future of clinical psychology, it is critical to all psychotherapists that it be defined broadly. To ensure appropriate development of VR applications, clinicians must have a clear understanding of the opportunities and challenges it will provide in professional practice. This review outlines the current state of clinical research relevant to the development of virtual environments for use in psychotherapy. In particular, the paper focuses its analysis on both actual applications of VR in clinical psychology and how different clinical perspectives can use this approach to improve the process of therapeutic change.
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            Systemizing empathy: teaching adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism to recognize complex emotions using interactive multimedia.

            This study evaluated Mind Reading, an interactive systematic guide to emotions, for its effectiveness in teaching adults with Asperger syndrome (AS) and high-functioning autism (HFA) to recognize complex emotions in faces and voices. Experiment 1 tested a group of adults diagnosed with AS/HFA (n = 19) who used the software at home for 10-15 weeks. Participants were tested on recognition of faces and voices at three different levels of generalization. A matched control group of adults with AS/HFA (n = 22) were assessed without any intervention. In addition, a third group of general population controls (n = 24) was tested. Experiment 2 repeated the design of Experiment 1 with a group of adults with AS/HFA who used the software at home and met in a group with a tutor on a weekly basis. They were matched to a control group of adults with AS/HFA attending social skills training and to a general population control group (n = 13 for all three groups). In both experiments the intervention group improved significantly more than the control group on close, but not distant, generalization tasks. Verbal IQ had significant effects in Experiment 2. Using Mind Reading for a relatively short period of time allows users to learn to recognize a variety of complex emotions and mental states. However, additional methods are required to enhance generalization.
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              Neurorehabilitation using the virtual reality based Rehabilitation Gaming System: methodology, design, psychometrics, usability and validation

              Background Stroke is a frequent cause of adult disability that can lead to enduring impairments. However, given the life-long plasticity of the brain one could assume that recovery could be facilitated by the harnessing of mechanisms underlying neuronal reorganization. Currently it is not clear how this reorganization can be mobilized. Novel technology based neurorehabilitation techniques hold promise to address this issue. Here we describe a Virtual Reality (VR) based system, the Rehabilitation Gaming System (RGS) that is based on a number of hypotheses on the neuronal mechanisms underlying recovery, the structure of training and the role of individualization. We investigate the psychometrics of the RGS in stroke patients and healthy controls. Methods We describe the key components of the RGS and the psychometrics of one rehabilitation scenario called Spheroids. We performed trials with 21 acute/subacute stroke patients and 20 healthy controls to study the effect of the training parameters on task performance. This allowed us to develop a Personalized Training Module (PTM) for online adjustment of task difficulty. In addition, we studied task transfer between physical and virtual environments. Finally, we assessed the usability and acceptance of the RGS as a rehabilitation tool. Results We show that the PTM implemented in RGS allows us to effectively adjust the difficulty and the parameters of the task to the user by capturing specific features of the movements of the arms. The results reported here also show a consistent transfer of movement kinematics between physical and virtual tasks. Moreover, our usability assessment shows that the RGS is highly accepted by stroke patients as a rehabilitation tool. Conclusions We introduce a novel VR based paradigm for neurorehabilitation, RGS, which combines specific rehabilitative principles with a psychometric evaluation to provide a personalized and automated training. Our results show that the RGS effectively adjusts to the individual features of the user, allowing for an unsupervised deployment of individualized rehabilitation protocols.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                +1-214-9053007 , +1-214-9053026 , drmkandalaft@gmail.com
                Journal
                J Autism Dev Disord
                J Autism Dev Disord
                Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
                Springer US (Boston )
                0162-3257
                1573-3432
                9 May 2012
                9 May 2012
                January 2013
                : 43
                : 1
                : 34-44
                Affiliations
                [ ]Center for BrainHealth®, University of Texas at Dallas, 2200 W. Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, TX 75235 USA
                [ ]Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Dallas, TX USA
                Article
                1544
                10.1007/s10803-012-1544-6
                3536992
                22570145
                8a9b6fc4-73cd-4da9-8662-0a305c100b87
                © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
                History
                Categories
                Original Paper
                Custom metadata
                © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

                Neurology
                adult,asperger,autism,intervention,treatment,virtual reality
                Neurology
                adult, asperger, autism, intervention, treatment, virtual reality

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