ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1628741
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Motor Coordination Therapy for Children with Developmental DisordersView all 5 articles
Rehabilitation therapy for children with autism based on interactive VR-Motion serious game intervention: a randomized-controlled trial
Provisionally accepted
Xufeng Ma1
Kai Song2*- 1Tongji University, Shanghai, China
- 2Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China
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Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) poses complex challenges in social communication, behavior, and learning, which traditional therapies often fail to fully address. This study explores an interactive VR-Motion serious game designed for children with ASD, leveraging immersive, controlled environments to enhance social skills, self-care, and emotional regulation.Objective: Children with autism often suffer from multiple complications; thus, new serious games that are versatile and easy to use are more suitable for them. This study aims to design and develop a versatile serious game for multifaceted intervention in children with autism, encompassing psychological, social, and learning aspects. We also aim to evaluate the rationality of its design and the effectiveness of its content, with the ultimate goal of providing an effective intervention therapy for children with autism.This study used the methods of pre-experiment and formal experiment. The pre-experiment (n=2): Control group (Average Age=123.8 months, SD=32.27 months) experimental group (Average Age=119.4 months, SD=29.41 months), in which one male and one female was trained 4 times a week for 4 hours each time for 3 weeks. The formal experiment(n=19): random number sampling method was adopted to sample them into two groups for simultaneous intervention training, 4 times a week for 4 hours each time for 16 weeks.(Average Age: 98.76-150.23 month, SD: 17.79-44.81 month, G Sex ratio :5:4)The analysis of formal experimental data shows that the design of this interactive VR-Motion serious game is reasonable and it has a good effect on the training of social communication and self-living ability of autistic children. In the post-test of wish tracking, df=9; t=-1.155 and p=0.281, it can be seen that the interactive VR-Motion serious game intervention has a good improvement on the social willingness of autistic children.The experimental results show that the design of interactive VR-Motion serious game provides excellent guidance for the simulation of autistic children's attempts to socialize and experience warm social emotions and introduces correct life situations by cultivating their
Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder(ASD), serious games, Virtual reality (VR), Game therapy, social communication
Received: 14 May 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kai Song, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China
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