Comparing immersive VR and non-immersive VR on social skill acquisition for students in middle school with ASD

Virtual reality (VR) has evolved to include non-immersive to fully-immersive experiences for the classroom. This study seeks to understand the potential effects VR may offer, specifically characteristics associated with how a student experiences a VR intervention and the effects of using a VR device for learning. A group experimental design was used to compare a fully-immersive VR intervention and an identical non-immersive VR intervention for a group of middle school participants with ASD (N = 22). Participants were randomly assigned a screen-based VR experience or a head-mounted display VR experience through rolling randomization. Results indicate that while the more immersive condition did not produce higher acquisition than the non-immersive condition, both device conditions did produce significant increases in learning.