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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder with different levels of severity. Although the exact causes of ASD is not yet known, nor is there a medical cure for ASD to date, special facilities and schools have been established to help individuals coping better and becoming more independent. With the advancement in Virtual Reality (VR) technology, there has been a greater depth of development of technology-enhanced game-based learning for children with ASD. This paper will describe our effort on virtual pink dolphins to assist children with ASD in their learning, at the same time, to avoid the use of physical pink dolphins which is a species endangered. A study on the use of a low-cost VR enabled pink dolphins game for children with ASD to learn direction following, psychomotor skills and hand-eye coordination will be reported.

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the effects of different duration and daily frequency of vestibular rehabilitation (VR) in patients with residual symptoms after benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) successful repositioning. Method: Patients with successful BPPV repositioning (n = 118) were divided into 3 groups according to VR duration and frequency: group A (n = 30; 15 minutes, 3 times/day), group B (n = 30; 30 minutes, 3 times/day), group C (n = 28; 15 minutes, 6 times/day), and control group D (n = 30; no VR). All patients completed the dizziness handicap inventory (DHI) and vestibular rehabilitation benefit questionnaire (VRBQ) at baseline and after 2 and 4 weeks. Results: The emotional scores and the proportion of severe dizziness disability in the DHI scores were significant differences between VR groups A to C and control group D after 2 and 4 weeks (all P <.05). There were significant differences in total DHI and VRBQ scores among the VR groups A to C after 2 and 4 weeks (all P <.05). Interestingly, emotion scores were not significantly different in group A (P =.385), group B (P =.569), and group C (P =.340) between 2 and 4 weeks. Meanwhile at 2 weeks, the difference in motion-provoked dizziness score between group A and B was statistically significant (P =.02). Conclusions: A total VR duration over 4 weeks can reduce dizziness and improve VR benefits in routine therapy in patients with residual dizziness after successful BPPV repositioning. Emotional improvement can be observed after 2 weeks. VR may help to relieve motion-provoked dizziness earlier if patients are willing to consider increasing the duration to more than 15 minutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basic social interaction and executing certain tasks can be difficult for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The symptoms of such behaviour include inappropriate gestures, body language and facial expressions, lack of interest in certain tasks, cognitive disability in coordination of limbs, and a difficulty in comprehending tasks' requirements. This paper will discuss our efforts to develop virtual learning environments for children with ASD to improve their gestures and their interests in comprehending tasks' requirements. Virtual environments are ideal for imparting skills necessary for independence before encouraging children with ASD to try these out in the real world and gain real-life experience. A high-end solution and a simplified solution will be presented together with a discussion on their comparison study.