Development and Application of Metaverse based Social Skills Training Program for children with autism spectrum disorder to improve social interaction ability: Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by abnormalities in social communication and limited and repetitive patterns of behavior. Children with autism spectrum disorder, who lack social communication skills, will eventually not interact with others and lack peer relationships compared to ordinary people. Thus, it is necessary to develop a program to improve social communication ability using digital technology for people with ASD. OBJECTIVE To develop and application a metaverse based child social skill training program. The program is to improve the social interaction ability of child with ASD in aged 7 to 12 years. To compare and analyze the biometric information collected through wearable device when applying the Metaverse based social skills training program to check the emotional changes of ASD children in stressful situations. METHODS This parallel randomized controlled study will be conducted on children aged 7 to 12 years who have been diagnosed with ASD. A metaverse-based social skills training program using digital technology will be administer to children, who voluntarily wished to participate in research and who obtained consent from their legal guardians. Treatment group will participate in the metaverse-based social skills training program developed by this research team once a week for 60 minutes per session for 4weeks. Control group will not intervene for the duration of the experiment. Treatment group will use wearable devices during the experiment to enable the collection of biometric information in real time. RESULTS The study is expected to recruit and enroll participants in November 2021. After registering the participants, the study will be conducted from January 2022 to April 2022. This research will be conducted jointly by Yonsei University and Dobrain Co., Ltd. Children participating in the program will use the online platform. CONCLUSIONS The metaverse-based PEERS program will also be effective in improving the social skills of children with ASD, similar to the offline PEERS program. The metaverse-based PEERS program offers excellent accessibility and low cost because it can be administered at home, and thus it is expected to be effective for many children with ASD. If a method can be applied to detect children's emotional changes early on by using biometric information collected through wearable devices, then the emotional changes like anxiety and anger can be alleviated in advance, reducing issues in children with ASD. CLINICALTRIAL Clinical Research Information Service KCT0006859; https://cris.nih.go.kr/cris/search/detailSearch.do?search_lang=E&search_page=M&pageSize=10&page=undefined&seq=20942&status=5&seq_group=20942