In October, OAR’s Board of Directors authorized funding for six new applied autism research studies in 2018. These new grants, totaling $176,090, bring OAR’s total research funding to over $3.6 million since 2002. This is the fourth of six previews to be featured in The OARacle this year.
Pedestrian skills are necessary for successful independent living. However, many adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are not able to safely navigate as a pedestrian. In a 2015 survey of more than 700 people with ASD and their family members, more than half reported that the person with autism could not cross a street independently. That inability makes it difficult if not impossible for the person to participate in community activities, ranging from holding a job and attending school to shopping and going to health care appointments.
In her one-year OAR-funded research study, Cecilia Feeley, Ph.D., plans to develop a pedestrian skills assessment that will evaluate and aid in teaching pedestrian and street-crossing skills to persons on the autism spectrum using a relatively inexpensive virtual reality program that simulates the street crossing experience. Dr. Feeley, who conducted the 2015 survey noted above, is the transportation autism project manager at the Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation at Rutgers.
The goal of Dr. Feeley’s study, “Development and Pilot Testing of a Pedestrian Skills Assessment with Enhanced Virtual Reality Experience,” is to offer support mechanisms to young adults with ASD so they can learn how to travel safely and independently in their communities. Documenting the necessary skills that address a variety of pedestrian environments and combining them with a virtual reality experience allows for a larger segment of this population to travel independently within their own communities.
The project is designed to determine the current skills of an individual while establishing the requisite skills needed for a variety of pedestrian infrastructure environments covering urban, suburban, and rural localities. The development of the proposed assessment with a virtual reality component can increase mobility, which can, in turn, lead to increased access to employment, housing, and community life opportunities.
Dr. Feeley and her team will recruit five to eight individuals between the ages of 18 and 40 to participate in a controlled pilot test. The participants must not have traveled alone as a pedestrian without some assistance or support during the last five years.
The researchers will develop a pedestrian skills assessment to identify and assess an individual’s ability to perform the skills necessary to access the least restrictive pedestrian route available that is still safe and appropriate for the individual’s development level. The assessment, which will be made up of a list of essential prerequisite skills, will also be a valuable tool for therapists and educators to use to identify pedestrian skill deficits.
To create the assessment, researchers will evaluate various pedestrian skill-building programs including those that are currently being used with persons with ASD through interviews with program leaders, data collection, and observation. In addition, the Rutgers team will document the skills and tasks required to successfully navigate as a pedestrian across a variety of intersections and street crossings.
In the second part of the project, the research team will create a virtual reality experience that enables study participants to physically navigate a street crossing. The virtual reality program will enable experiences in:
The assessment tool will be used to initially assess each participant’s ability to navigate their way through various pedestrian infrastructure environments and street crossings. Once the participants have participated in the virtual reality experience, they will actually cross streets in a safe, controlled environment. The project team will take note of any discrepancies that occur between predictions derived from the results of the assessment and virtual reality experiences and participants’ actual ability to navigate in various pedestrian environments.
By researching, developing, piloting, and evaluating the pedestrian skills assessment with an enhanced virtual reality experience, this study has the potential to provide a program that will build the skills people with autism need to travel in their communities safely and independently. Caregivers can use the tool to determine the safest and most appropriate pedestrian route for the current skill set of the person with autism to enable them to be independently mobile.
In addition to providing a means of teaching people with autism to safely navigate streets as pedestrians, this project can also provide a model for using virtual reality to teach people with ASD new skills. The process and procedures used in the project can be adapted for employment and independent living skills.
A program that can teach people with ASD how to navigate as a pedestrian can provide greater independence and open access to jobs, recreation, social opportunities, and activities of daily living.
Teen Wins Award For A Coding Program
In 2020, Sreenidi Bala, a teenager from Farmington, Connecticut, started a passion project that would change the lives of hundreds of autistic students.
RUN Athletes Offer Summer Training Tips
With summer heat waves upon us and fall marathons on the horizon, RUN FOR AUTISM’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon and TCS New York…
New Job Seeker Content on the Hire Autism Website
Hire Autism recently published two new employment-related articles on its website. These articles aim to provide much-needed answers to job seekers’ frequently asked questions.
