A Design of Multipurpose Virtual Reality Game for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that related to brain development, affecting communication and behavior. Hallmarks of children with ASD are, they are not interested in communicating with other people and they find it really hard to focus on something they are not interested. Children with ASD need to learn some skills in order to increase their independence, including social skills, life skills, and focus. Some research studies have found that virtual reality (VR) is an effective tool for treatment in healthcare. In order to increase skills of children with ASD, we developed a system, based on VR and Leap Motion. We developed a game platform aiming to attract children with ASD to train their focus by placing balls with different colors in the box according to the ball’s color, and increasing their social skills by training them how react with social situations and virtual people around them. Our design has been tested and it showed well running interface. Participants in this game had three sessions of training and they were engaged with the game environment and they were able to follow the game scenario well for focus training, signs learning, and eye gazing learning. Their accuracies for all games were increased. The accuracy increase was about 11.16% for Game for Subject Focus, 16.6% for game for Focus with Distraction game, and subjects could interpret the arrows better by reaching each destination 2 seconds faster on each training session. The accuracy of Eye Gazing game was 75% for each training session.