COMING TO LIFE: VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AND SOCIAL SKILLS

ELISA GOPIN, LISI@LIFELONG-LEARNER.COM, DECEMBER 14, 2009

Virtual environments (VE) have a lot of potential in teaching social skills to students with Aspergers syndrome (AS) or high functioning autism (HFA). They can be used to create more realistic and engaging Social Stories for students that also provide a safe environment in which to practice the skills they are learning. Although there have been some promising studies that show VEs can not only teach specific skills but help students learn to generalize their new skills to multiple situations; more study is needed to see if these results can apply to larger groups of participants and to determine what the parameters are that make a social skills training VE successful (Rust & Smith, 2006).

What Is Asperger's Syndrome?

According to Wikipedia Asperger's Syndrome is a developmental disorder classified on the autistic spectrum. It is characterized by a lack of nonverbal communication skills and a lack of emotional empathy with other people. People with AS typically have above average verbal skills, but don't use or understand language the same way as other people. This leads to social problems and an inability to connect with another person by understanding their point of view. It is these difficulties with social interactions that qualifies AS as a form of autism; yet it is different from autism in that IQ tends to be average or above average and individuals with AS have advanced language development. It is often compared to HFA autism unaccompanied by mental retardation (Asperger syndrome - Wikipedia, n.d.).

The lack of ability to understand emotional needs of people around them is a critical problem for people with AS. Despite high IQs and the ability to remember in theory many social rules, people with AS just don't "get" what other people expect from them and act in ways that others consider odd. Although many people with AS desire friendships and social bonds, most find this challenging and an ongoing source of frustration. In addition to leading to loneliness and depression, this lack of empathy can cause employment problems if a person with AS can't get along with a boss or colleagues.

Social Stories For Social Skills

Carol Gray developed a system of creating stories outlining typical social situations and appropriate responses as a way to help children with autism learn and review strategies for interacting successfully with their peers. These are called Social Stories and are written for each child individually to focus on specific behaviors they need to practice (Rust & Smith, 2006).

Gray recommends that a Social Story contain 4 types of sentences:

1) Descriptive, which are factual statements that outline the actual story

2) Perspective, which describe the emotional state of someone else involved in the story (i.e. not the student with AS or autism)

3) Directive, this identifies what would be an appropriate response to particular situation described in the story

4) Affirmative, which stresses an important point in the story

The story should contain mostly descriptive, perspective, and affirmative sentences and a minimal amount of directives so the student does not feel overwhelmed with commands (Rust & Smith, 2006).

Swaggart et al. performed the first systematic study in 1995 to test the effectiveness of Social Stories on decreasing unwanted behaviors in children with autism and did find a positive correlation, showing the effectiveness of the treatment. Subsequent studies support this finding. Although there are inherent limitations in creating a rigorous experimental design to study something which is by nature individualized, these studies do provide useful guidelines to build on and support the idea that Social Stories are a powerful tool for teaching social skills to children with autism (Rust & Smith, 2006).

Use Of Digital Media To Extend Social Stories

Hagiwara & Myles (1999) studied the use of multimedia Social Stories to teach social skills. They also examined whether students were able to generalize the skills they used to their every day environments. They hypothesized that students would be more interested in viewing multimedia stories rather than written versions and would therefore learn better from them. The study, while not conclusive due to a small sample size, did encourage the use of technology with this population of students. A later study by Lacava, Golan, Baron-Cohen, & Myles (2007), that looked at the effectiveness of a computer program to teach emotion recognition to students with AS, came to the same conclusion.

More (2008) developed a system of digital stories to extend both the efficiency of Social Stories and ease of use for teachers. Digital stories add a multidimensional aspect to Social Stories that creates a more dynamic learning environment. Students can add their own images and sound, which increases ownership of the story as well as builds interest in using it. Digital media also allows for more efficiency because teachers can re-use photos, easily copy and paste materials, and more easily take into account a range of skills and learning styles.

Teachers create a photo bank using digital photos of people and places that the students are familiar with from school and their neighborhood at home. Objects that the students enjoy are included as well. Students then record scripts in their own voices onto the computer, which are then incorporated into the digital stories together with the photos. The use of digital media increases learning by grabbing student's attention with familiar sights and sounds and makes them feel the stories are really about them (More, 2008). Students who lack strong verbal skills are more engaged by visual media than written words on a page.

Extending Engagement In Media With Virtual Reality

Creating two-dimensional media presentations sparks students' interest in using and learning from Social Stories. Virtual reality (VR) takes the next step and brings the stories to life.

Parsons & Mitchell(2002) argue that a virtual reality environment is an ideal tool for students to use for practicing social skills. Because it is a more realistic environment than a multimedia presentation, it not only provides review of behavior rules but also a chance to apply them in context. When students read a Social Story they are attempting to memorize appropriate rules of conduct so when they find themselves in a similar situation they will know how to react in a socially acceptable manner. Virtual reality provides not just the rules but also an environment in which to apply them.

A virtual reality program creates a safe environment in which students can practice their skills without fear of offending anyone in real life. If they make a mistake in a particular social situation they can simply replay that scenario and try again, until they feel comfortable making decisions in that specific situation. Being able to practice similar skills across different social contexts encourages flexibility in social problem solving (S Parsons & P Mitchell, 2002).

Having scenarios saved on a computer can be comforting to a student who craves repetition and control over their environment two things computers provide easily, things that other students who are not autistic may not be so accommodating about. Some researchers therefore fear that encouraging computer use among students with autism can increase social isolation rather than reduce it. However, given the natural collaboration involved in teachers and parents using Social Stories with these students, as well as the built-in unpredictability of social-training VR programs, Parsons & Mitchell (2002) conclude that VR offers more help than hindrance in increasing desired social behavior among students with autism.

Applying Virtual Environments In Social Skills Training

Cobb et al. (2002) experimented with using both single user virtual environments (SVEs) to provide a safe practice environment which students can return to as often as they'd like and collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) to provide an area where several users can interact together. They concluded that SVEs are ideal for practicing specific behaviors in a structured, repetitive manner and that CVEs are ideal for testing those skills in a realistic setting where the user must decide how to react in an unpredictable situation. They also found that users enjoyed the game-like design of the virtual environments and did often interpret them as being a representation of real-life situations.

A 2005 study by Moore et al. looked at whether children and adolescents with autism could understand emotions represented by a computer avatar. The study included 34 participants who had been diagnosed with autism and tested their ability to identify emotions from avatar facial expressions. Over 90% of study participants were correctly able to infer feelings from program avatars. This study confirmed that VEs can be used successfully to teach emotional empathy to children with autism.

Creating Virtual Environments

Although VEs provide a more engaging, realistic skills training environment than written stories they also take much longer to create. As technology develops new tools are created that can make this process easier. I propose two different methods for creating a virtual environment using freely available tools.

Alice is a programming tool that makes it relatively easy to create an interactive, 3D animation. It is primarily used to teach basic programming concepts to beginning programmers but can also be used by people without programming skills to create virtual worlds using pre-built 3D objects and a drag-and-drop interface. It does have a learning curve before it can be used effectively but looks promising for creating virtual worlds with a reasonable investment of time. Alice is a free program created by Carnegie Mellon University and can be downloaded from alice.org.

Another interesting method for creating interactive 3D movies combines Second Life (SL) and Youtube. It was developed by Dr. Chareen Snelson at Boise State University. She created a set in SL and then recorded different scenes using screen recording software. The movies were strung together using the Youtube annotation tool into a series of branching scenes that showed different consequences depending on how the user answers questions presented at the end of each scene. The movie can be viewed athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaaN1eJhCdg .

This interactive "Save Princess Dot" video was created to test science knowledge; however, this method could easily be adapted to test any kind of knowledge, including social skills. The information would first have to be presented to the students and then they could test their understanding of the social skills presented to them by going through an interactive branching video. Students are being presented with pre-recorded scenarios so there is no anxiety about inadvertently offending a real person who might be controlling an avatar. Since the story could have many branches to accommodate multiple possible reactions it could contain enough unpredictability to realistically test whether students have properly mastered a particular skill. This method would be ideal for creating a repetitive, structured skill drill and is comparable to the SVE described earlier in this paper.

Conclusion

All the studies that have been conducted so far seem to confirm that the use of technology enhances the efficiency of Social Stories in teaching social skills to students with AS or HFA. Because of their high IQ and ability to learn through routine, as well as their desire for social interactions, this is an ideal population for this technique (Hagiwara & Myles, 1999). Using multimedia increases interest in the stories as well as improves efficiency in creating story elements that can be reused with future students (More, 2008). There are inherent problems with any study that looks at Social Stories since by nature they are individualized, plus sample sizes tend to be small given the time required to create a large number of individualized stories and train educators in using them (Rust & Smith, 2006). However, although more studies are needed to determine how best to use technology to maximize success, VE based Social Stories are a powerful tool for teaching basic skills for interacting in social situations. References Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Asperger syndrome. Retrieved December 8, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome Cobb, S., Beardon, L., Eastgate, R., Glover, T., Kerr, S., Neale, H., et al. (2002). Applied virtual environments to support learning of social interaction skills in users with Asperger's Syndrome. Digital Creativity, 13(1), 11. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14626268.asp Hagiwara, T., & Myles, B. S. (1999). A multimedia Social Story intervention: Teaching skills to children with Autism. Focus on Autism & Other Developmental Disabilities, 14(2), 82. doi:10.1177/108835769901400203 Lacava, P. G., Golan, O., Baron-Cohen, S., & Myles, B. S. (2007). Using assistive technology to teach emotion recognition to students with Asperger Syndrome: A pilot study. Remedial & Special Education, 28(3), 174-181. doi:10.1177/07419325070280030601 More, C. (2008). Digital stories targeting social skills for children with disabilities: Multidimensional learning. Intervention in School & Clinic, 43(3), 168177. doi:10.1177/1053451207312919 Parsons, S., & Mitchell, P. (2002). The potential of virtual reality in social skills training for people with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 46(5), 430-443. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2788.2002.00425.x Rust, J., & Smith, A. (2006). How should the effectiveness of Social Stories to modify the behaviour of children on the autistic spectrum be tested? Lessons from the literature. Autism, 10(2), 125-138. doi:10.1177/1362361306062019