Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects socio-emotional skills and perspective-taking abilities. Although social stories in a form of virtual reality program can help children with ASD, developing them and identifying appropriate responses might be subjective and thus challenging. Using Delphi method, and guided by general case training, we involved 63 parents and clinicians of individuals with ASD, in two rounds of online iteration to refine the stories. Scenarios that reached a 75% agreement level were accepted. This project is the first study to develop and validate a library of 75 short socio-emotional stories that illustrate various types and intensities of emotion in three social contexts of home, school, and community as the content of a virtual reality program.
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We would like to express our sincere thanks to funding agencies, the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and UBC Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies for their great support.
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Dr. Ghanouni, Dr. Jarus, Kristin Mow, and Alyssa Ledingham were involved in study design, ethics application, analysis of data, and writing or editing the manuscript. Dr. Zwicker and Dr. Lucyshyn were involved in the study design, editing, and reviewing the manuscript.
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All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University Behavioural Research Ethics Board.
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Ghanouni, P., Jarus, T., Zwicker, J.G. et al. Social Stories for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Validating the Content of a Virtual Reality Program. J Autism Dev Disord 49, 660–668 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3737-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3737-0