Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with prevalence rates of 1 in 68 individuals (CDC). ASD manifests with a lack of social and communication skills and the presentation of repetitive and/or restrictive patterns of behaviors. Individuals with ASD face important challenges in their social encounters due to a lack of intuitive social ability. This is the salient sign of Autism which emerges early in development and usually is manifested as a lack of interest in social interaction or pronounced awkwardness which results in a lack of engagement in activities that promote social integration. This deficit later on affects work prospects and limits the opportunities for achieving financial independence. The latter appears to be an area where individuals with ASD face serious problems not so much regarding “hard” skills as with “soft” skills, namely the interpersonal, communication and social intelligence skills, that are considered critical for occupational success. In addition, it appears that many adults with high functioning ASD, already working, are not receiving the support at work that they need in order to perform their jobs well. The project will offer a high quality learning opportunity through the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology in combination with social scripts to train individuals with ASD in “soft” skills (interpersonal intelligence, communication) in increasingly challenging work environments. The project is highly innovative in that it supplies a high quality learning opportunity through the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology to simulate working environments that in vivo may appear hostile or perplexing to people with Autism. The simulated VR environment will be manipulated by experienced trainers in a way that will offer the maximum amount of scenarios presenting possible situations that may cause awkwardness and/or elicit a non productive, insensitive or off-putting response by the person with Autism. The simulated VR environment will present opportunities for training “soft” (conversational, empathizing, turn-taking, socially responsive, conflict resolution at work) skills by specifically addressing the deficits identified in the social behavior of the participants. Therefore, there is a potential for the creation of a personalized learning environment that presents with a repertoire of individualized scenarios. The project aims to create a certified curriculum of learning objectives that will correspond to training scenarios. The progress of the participants in the training program will be measured using a number of well calibrated standardized instruments that will detect improvement in performance in any of the target abilities. The project will offer these VR scenarios to all trainers all over the world for free, but also an authoring tool to be able to modify existing or create new scenarios, thus giving them pioneer tools, accompanied by certified materials, & a sound pedagogical framework behind. The consortium is composed from partners from 4 European Countries (Greece, Cyprus, Ireland and Denmark) collecting all the required expertise in the design and development of adult education programs for the target group of people with ASD. The duration of the project is 24 months. The implementation plan is structured around the main goal of the project that is to deliver the foreseen curriculum with the VR training tools and evaluate it against real needs of people with ASD. Thus, the first activity foresees the drafting of the pedagogical framework of the WORKINGTHROUGH platform. The activities that follow deal with preparing the training materials for the curriculum and the social stories scenarios for the VR tools. An initial set of 3D models, animations and graphics covering the curriculum needs will be designed. The development of the 3D authoring tool will follow to enhance the sustainability and transferability potential of WORKINGTHROUGH. Since the desired functionality of the VR initial scenarios will be finalised, the authoring tool will give trainers, therapists and parents the ability to become creators of new VR social stories, to modify or translate the existing ones(in even more languages) in order to use them with their individuals with ASD. The short term impact of the project addresses the needs of people of people with Autism and their families that aim for a more inclusive life. The pool of 40 participants with ASD in the pilot trials will consist of four groups of 10 people in each country (10 in Greece, 10 in Denmark, 10 in Ireland and 10 in Cyprus). Βy promoting the acquisition of social skills useful for occupational adjustment and success the project promotes the concept of financial independence thus relieving the families from the financial burden imposed on them by the inability of the person with ASD to support himself or herself. The project partners have proven record working with people with Autism.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with prevalence rates of 1 in 68 individuals. ASD manifests with a lack of social and communication skills and the presentation of repetitive and/or restrictive patterns of behaviors. Individuals with ASD face important challenges in their social encounters due to a lack of intuitive social ability. This lack usually emerges early in development and usually is manifested as a lack of interest in social interaction or pronounced awkwardness which results in a lack of engagement in activities that promote social integration. Most children with a diagnosis of autism in childhood or adolescence receive high quality services either in the form of individualised educational support or in the form of speech therapy, occupational therapy or psychological and psychiatric support – if needed. Once they reach adulthood their lack of a flexible repertoire of social behaviors makes it difficult to adapt to a complex social environment. In addition to that autistic adults have no where to turn to because services are mainly geared towards children and adolescents. Lacking the necessary support and the interpersonal skills to adapt to a complex social environment most individuals “fail to launch” and may start to manifest signs of a mental distress and eventually, mental disorder. This realisation of the lack of services for adult high functioning autistic individuals was the impetus for developing the idea for the project Working Through. The main objective of the project was to offer a high quality learning opportunity in work related skills for high functioning autistic individuals through the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology by using social scripts to impart “soft” skills (interpersonal, communication skills) in increasingly challenging work environments. The project was highly innovative in that it supplied a high quality learning opportunity through the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology by simulating a working environment manipulated by experienced trainers in a way that put the autistic individual in potential social situations that may cause awkwardness and/or elicit a non productive, insensitive or off-putting response. The simulated VR environment presented with opportunities for training “soft” (conversational, empathizing, turn-taking, socially responsive, conflict resolution at work) skills by specifically addressing the deficits identified in the social behavior of the participants. The objective was achieved in that all autistic participants realized benefits in their social skills repertoire and the expert trainers gained valuable experience in using the VR environment to effect behavior change. There were four groups of participants, one in each country with a total of 36 individuals participating in the pilot trials (9 in Greece, 10 in Denmark, 10 in Ireland and 7 in Cyprus). All individuals had received a diagnosis of ASD, either in childhood or as a young adult. DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES The training regiment in this project was defined by the pedagogical framework which set the theoretical foundations, the instructional means and success criteria of the training program. This allowed for the development of the curriculum which specified the teaching materials and activities that would define the kinds of materials and activities that would constitute the training program. The curriculum set the framework for the development of the social scripts with the kinds of training opportunities described in the curriculum. A VR environment was created that provided the learning opportunities in the form of social scripts . Finally the autistic participants received VR based work related social skills training with the guidance of an expert who provided scaffolded instruction tailored to the rate of progress of each participant. IMPACT There was success in proving the concept of using VR to impart skills to individuals who lack work related social skills (Proof of concept). All autistic participants felt comfortable in using the VR headset and there were no cases of nausea or discomfort. The training program was successful in that all participants realized benefits from their participation in terms of acquiring or improving on work related social skills. All post- training learning indices were positive and most participants expressed interest in participating in other training activities using VR. In terms of long term benefits the project managed to bring together technology experts from the field of Virtual Reality with experts from the fields of education and mental health and kindled the interest of a potential future collaborations by extending the newfound know how in helping people with other mental disorders such as social anxiety and phobias. Finally, it set the path for similar undertakings by providing the principles and the means of developing a VR based training program.