Research on the improvement of daily living skills of children with autism in virtual campus environments

This study investigated the effectiveness of daily living skills intervention training for children with autism in a virtual campus setting. First, six children with autism (age M = 10.50, SD = 2.22) participated in a 4-week experiment totaling 8.4 h. The effectiveness of the virtual school environment and the daily living skills intervention were used as indicators during data collection and processing. In addition, a series of 3D environments based on daily life were constructed using SketchUp Pro 2021, which were converted to virtual environments using Unreal Engine 4. The HTC Vive external headset facilitated intervention training for children with autism. Most importantly, the results demonstrated the effectiveness of interactive domains such as grabbing bread in a cafeteria environment, making a phone call in front of a school, and switching lights and picking up a book in a library environment, where participants showed significantly higher levels of performance (p < 0.05). Scores on the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) for children with autism (M = 19.33, SD = 4.18) were lower than baseline values (M = 22.83, SD = 4.79), while scores on the Social Skills Questionnaire (SSQ) (M = 26.17, SD = 3.97) were higher than baseline values (M = 20.00, SD = 2.28), suggesting that the overall social effectiveness of the participants following the intervention improved (p < 0.05). In conclusion, the statistical analysis showed that participants who received the intervention had significantly improved daily living skills such as grabbing bread, making phone calls, changing lights, and picking up books.