The use of Virtual Reality (VR) as an educational tool for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is being addressed in different recognized studies with an aim to provide a support tool for the implementation of a series of activities that will help improve the difficulties that the students with ASD have with their social and emotional skills (Cheng et al., 2010, DiGennaro et al., 2011, Josman et al., 2008, Kaland et al., 2011, Parsons et al., 2006, Wainer and Ingersoll, 2011, Wallace et al., 2010). The ASD students that participate in this study have a visual and extremely specific way of thinking, a logical but somewhat abstract reasoning and, even though these students are known to be both intelligent and have an excellent memory, they often experience great difficulties when planning executive functions and with their social skills, most noticeably in their emotional incapacity to maintain empathic relationships and to identify such emotions. (Campatelli et al., 2013, Ehrich and Miller, 2009, Volkmar et al., 2009). All of these deficits lead to a lower comprehension of the rules of communication and to an anticipation of what others feel, do or say, and makes them display an attitude of indifference.

Most current VR environments are visual experiences displayed on a computer screen. However, in Immersive Virtual Reality Systems (IVRS), the user is completely immersed in a computer-generated world, giving them the impression that they have “stepped inside” a synthetic world. These systems offer a controlled and safe three-dimensional representation of real environments that can be used repeatedly. Our aim in this paper consists of designing and applying an IVRS to stimulate the notably visual cognitive processing that characterizes students with ASD for the purpose of improving the students’ emotional skills. A large number of strategies used in educational intervention for students with ASD are based on transferring information using visual aids and materials. There is research to support that these students have a tendency towards visual and structured thinking (Albrecht et al., 2014, Gray, 1998, Lissner, 1992, Savner and Smith Myles, 2000). Later works of Grandin (2009) state that visual supports can have an indirect as well as a direct impact on social skills.

A number of authors (see e.g. Blascovich et al., 2002, Wallace et al., 2008) indicated that IVRS can allow an improvement in the stimulation of students with ASD in comparison to the VR-based systems. As indicated in the related works section, several IVRS have been proposed to enhance the social skills of ASD children. In contrast with previous approaches, the proposed IVRS has been designed and tested specifically for the development of these students’ emotional responses. Furthermore, a robot with a camera at the end-effector has been incorporated in the above-mentioned IVRS to determine the child’s facial expressions at every moment when carrying out the tasks in the virtual environment. The information obtained from the camera at the end of the robot will be used both to evaluate if the child’s behavior is appropriate as well as to update the IVRS, as we will explain throughout the paper.

The importance of emotions in social relations is a key element in establishing effective communication between people. Children learn from a young age to develop the capacity to express emotions that allow them to regulate and control their social environment. Through the human face and its emotional expressions, we are able to see and interpret the emotional state of another person while we also obtain a great amount of information (Balconi, 2008, Balconi and Carrera, 2008). As mentioned earlier, the goal of this study is to improve the emotional competencies of students with ASD. Based on our earlier studies (Lorenzo, Pomares, & Lledó, 2013), the IVRS offer the possibility to represent structured and clear visual information, characteristics that adjust well to the cognitive style of students with ASD. Although these earlier studies have not addressed emotional skills, the immersive system allows students to train and develop new situations and tasks. In the work presented in this paper, the previous IVRS has been improved with an additional sensory system as well as the integration of new properties to train and improve the emotional competencies of students with ASD.

This paper will be arranged in the following way: In Section 2 there is a description of previous related works as well as of the specific characteristics that are meant to be stimulated and improved in the students with ASD. In Section 3 we will introduce the main features of the IVRS and the sensory system used. The method and the protocol of tasks will be described in Section 4. Finally, the results and the conclusions will be described in Sections 5 Results, 6 Conclusions respectively.