Asperger's Therapy in Second Life article

Post Reply New Topic

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/OnCall/story?id=4133184&page=1
I just saw this and I thought I'd share.

It's an interesting concept - virtual therapy.
Thank you for sharing that article.

Be careful of scammers.

person who wrote the article doesn't know much about AS. Maybe if that was written 10 years ago...

Anyway, sounds kinda cool. I don't have an SL account and still people can learn about social skills, putting them into practice is a whole other thing. Me, I need drugs to help me.

It makes a pretty good point actually...

"Experts in the field, however, are unsure about the potential effectiveness of such a program, saying that using virtual interaction could become so comfortable to patients who are already socially awkward, they might never move beyond it. ...You don't want them to just be able to interact via a computer."

And this is where an expert's opinion of goals versus the individual's opinion of goals will sometimes differ.

Well i can see one issue.......what about people who learn the social rules/social skills like can understand how it works but just cannot put them into practice. I mean there are quite a few things I've learned and could probably identify in pictures like I am usually awesome at those tests where you try and decide what emotion someone is feeling based on a picture of the eyes.........but IRL I am usually rather oblivious to a lot of social cues especially if I am actually interacting with someone because it seems my brain can't process and react to that all at once.

So I am not sure if this therapy would address that, It might help to teach better social skills but no so much with the mental barriers that might prevent one from actually putting them to use.