ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) Preschool Children Socialization Using Experimental Monitored Virtual Environments

The paper presents the development and testing of a virtual reality (VR) application for the development of social skills in preschool children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). The application includes a system of adaptive learning scenarios based on traditional methods of working with children with ASD, an interactive virtual assistant with an advanced navigation system and based on hand gesture recognition. Special attention was paid to the development of an automatic report generation system based on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), which analyses more than 10 different parameters of user interaction with the virtual environment to track the dynamics of the condition. These reports form the basis for analysing user interaction with the virtual environment, which is especially important for the therapy of children with ASD, as it allows to adapt the training methodology to the individual characteristics of each child and adjust the therapeutic process based on objective progress indicators. The network interaction possibility was implemented to control the therapy process in real time, including visualisation of the user's movement trajectory and analysis of the visited zones of the virtual space. Initial testing was carried out on a control group of three normotypical 4–5 year old children to collect reference values of interaction with the virtual environment.