Applications of Virtual Reality to Support Social Communication in Individuals with Autism: A Systematic Review of Immersive Interventions

Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool to support social communication in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study presents a systematic review of 28 empirical studies sourced from ERIC, APA PsycInfo, and Scopus. Articles in English published between 2014 and 2015 were included, with the last search being 10 June 2025, that implemented immersive VR interventions for children, adolescents, and young adults with ASD. Following PRISMA guidelines, we analyzed participant characteristics, intervention features, research designs, and reported outcomes with 91.6% IOA. An analysis of the risk of bias was performed using the RoB 2 framework for randomized trials and ROBINS-I for non-randomized studies. Results from the two assessments showed low to significant bias. However, due to the relative novelty of this field of study, all data was deemed valuable and was therefore included in this review. Results show that immersive VR interventions are generally effective in improving skills such as eye contact, emotion recognition, empathy, and conversational abilities, while also being engaging and well accepted by participants. Nevertheless, most studies were limited by small sample sizes, lack of control groups, and scarce evidence for long-term maintenance or real-world generalization. The findings underscore the potential of immersive VR as an innovative and scalable approach for enhancing social communication in ASD, while highlighting the need for more rigorous and longitudinal research. No funding was obtained for this systematic review. No protocol registration was carried out for this review as it was unfunded and exploratory in nature.