A group led by Professor Ayako Okouchi of the Graduate School of Kumamoto University has developed an evaluation system using a virtual reality (VR) classroom to evaluate the characteristics of children with developmental disorders of school age. revealed its characteristics.
Due to their sensory processing and accommodation characteristics, developmentally disabled children have difficulty concentrating attention, controlling impulses, and processing auditory information in a noisy school environment.Therefore, we investigated the difficulty of children with developmental disabilities at school by using a VR classroom with goggles that is close to reality and allows accurate measurement like a laboratory environment.
In the study, a teacher gave a 90-second homeroom presentation in a VR classroom, during which several distracting events were designed to occur. We evaluated the characteristics of the sense of perceiving the state) and comprehension.
As a result, the group of children with developmental disorders significantly increased their fixation time on the teacher for 30 seconds from 45 to 15 seconds after the start of the VR classroom video.In addition, the average score of the quiz about the contents of the teacher's explanation in the VR classroom and the heart rate perception test to accurately count one's own heart rate was significantly lower than that of the neurotypical children group.Furthermore, the children with developmental disabilities scored significantly lower on 8 of the 6 subscales of the MAIA (Multidimensional Assessment of Self Awareness of Bodily Sensory Awareness).This indicated the possibility of the VR classroom to evaluate the difference in sensory regulation between school-aged children with developmental disorders and typical development children.
In this study, we used a VR classroom to evaluate the senses of school-age children with developmental disorders, and clarified their characteristics for the first time.It is hoped that this will help clarify the difficulties faced by children with developmental disabilities in school life and provide guidelines for measures to prevent school refusal and poor academic performance.
