Inclusion of third-person perspective in CAVE-like immersive 3D virtual reality role-playing games for social reciprocity training of children with an autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

The present study aimed to improve the ability of children with autism to recognize emotions correctly. We used our third-person perspective role-playing game (TPP-RPG) method to teach social skills and help develop an improved understanding of the six basic emotions. The experiment was divided into two phases: The first involved working with traditional figure card emotional recognition and the second involved a subject entering a 3D cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE) to engage with interactive games. While the traditional graphic card is a static picture that represents one of the six basic human emotions, the virtual reality of CAVE-like immersive 3D role-playing games enables the use of actual picture scene syntheses plus the animation of 3D characters to express emotions. The participating children were instructed to role-play with (1) three-dimensional (3D) virtual role animations and observe (2) two different real-time switchable role-play animations of themselves and their counterpart socially interacting. This single-subject study was based on multiple-baseline, across-subject design and involved 5 weeks of TPP-RPG training intervention. From this research activity, we found that the role-play performance of all three participants rose substantially during the intervention phase and remained significantly higher in the maintenance phase compared to their baseline levels.