Games such as Second Life may provide a great opportunity for opening social doors for people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This virtual world allows users to create characters and interact socially with others in an online world. In a recent article, CNN reports on how this can be beneficial. Created by an adult with Asperger’s Syndrome, Naughty Auties is a world where people with ASD can interact with one another in a more relaxed, less socially intimidating environment. This sounds like a great solution for teaching social interaction and working on social skills.
This kind of solution for helping teens and adults with ASD may end up causing more harm than good. In worlds such as Second Life, there are an unfortunate group of people called “griefers” whose sole purpose is to cause harm to others. These people literally seek out vulnerable people in these online worlds and deliberately disrupt the world and cause harm, just because they can. In worlds such as Second Life, there is no supervision, there are no limits, and anyone can get in and do whatever they want and say whatever they want. This opens the doors for griefers and others will the wrong intentions. For the ASD community, they are especially vulnerable due to their difficulties with understanding subtle social cues and often, language difficulties.
Although I support the idea of providing a virtual world for working on social skills and understanding, I am nervous about an open-ended world where people with disabilities are completely exposed and open to griefers. Instead, I would like to see something similar that is not open to anyone wanting to join, and that operates in a more controlled space perhaps with computer players (like in the SIMS) or with invite-only people that have been screened. The other issue to consider is how effective this kind of environment is for increasing skills, with no data collection or research on the effectiveness of doing this for someone with ASD, I would hesitate. Research is clearly needed on this kind of program, particularly if it is described as an intervention or skill-building program.
In general, I think the idea is great, but people should be aware of the potential risks before jumping into a world with so many risks.
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April 8th, 2008 at 4:37 am
I’ve played Sims and I believe it has some educational value as far as relationship education, but of course there’s no research on that.
The power of second life is in the social networking that takes place within different communities. It’s the open nature of it that makes it so powerful and appealing, as there are millions of other people to interact with. Yeah, there are griefers which can spoil the party but that occurs in real life, too. At least in the virtual world they can work together on dealing with miscreants and try out different methods in different virtual settings. Making it more restrictive would make it safer but would limit the social opportunities, which I think makes the price too steep.
I agree, branding it as an intervention for autism is going a bit far. It can be a game and an educational tool for learning new skills, but it is mostly 3D social networking.
D.