Abstract
Individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities struggle to acquire and appropriately use social skills to improve the quality of their lives. These critical skills can be difficult to teach because they are context dependent and many students are not motivated to engage in instruction to learn them. The use of multi-modal technologies shows promise in the teaching a variety of skills to individuals with disabilities. iAnimate Live is a project that makes virtual environments, virtual characters (avatars), augmented reality, and animation more accessible for teachers and clinicians. These emerging technologies have the potential to provide more efficient, portable, accessible, and engaging instructional materials to teach a variety of social skills. After reviewing the relevant research on using virtual environments virtual characters (avatars) and animation for social skills instruction, this article describes current experimental applications exploring their use via the iAnimate Live project.
Highlights
Current advances in technology have made devices like computers and tablets accessible to the general public to the extent that the potential to use these devices as learning tools in the classroom becomes more feasible
This study focused on individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disabilities who struggled with visual recognition of themselves and who demonstrated a mental age of approximately 15–18 months
The research reviewed in this paper provides multiple examples of isolated projects that have evaluated the effects of this technology on individuals with disabilities, but there are few ongoing systematic applications of virtual environments (VE) and animation in schools or clinics
Summary
Current advances in technology have made devices like computers and tablets accessible to the general public to the extent that the potential to use these devices as learning tools in the classroom becomes more feasible. In studying effects of rapport on teaching students with disabilities, McLaughlin and Carr [4] found that a staff member may establish poor rapport with a student who associates an aversive activity with him or her. These aversive activities can include chores or other tasks that the student does not want to do: learning appropriate bathroom or self-care skills, for example [5]. To reduce such behavior problems, teachers must incorporate elements in teaching activities that make the experience more enjoyable and valuable to the student [2]
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