Effectiveness of Virtual Reality on Emotional Inhibition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Keywords:
virtual reality, emotional inhibition, Autism Spectrum DisorderAbstract
The present study was conducted with the aim of examining the effectiveness of virtual reality on emotional inhibition in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The research design was a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design with a control group. From the population of children with ASD in Arak City in 2024, a sample of 30 participants was selected purposively through reviewing clinical records and diagnostic forms completed by a specialist in neurodevelopmental disorders or a child psychiatrist. The participants were then randomly assigned to two groups of 15 (experimental and control). First, emotional inhibition in both groups was measured using the Emotional Stroop Task (pretest). Then, the experimental group received a virtual reality intervention for 15 sessions of 35 minutes each, twice per week. After the intervention ended, emotional inhibition in both groups was again measured using the Emotional Stroop Task (posttest), and two months later both groups were assessed again for treatment stability (follow-up). To evaluate the effect of the intervention on emotional inhibition scores, repeated-measures ANOVA with a between-group and a within-group factor was used. The findings showed that the mean scores of emotional inhibition in the experimental group increased significantly after the virtual reality intervention compared to the control group, and this effect remained stable at follow-up (p < .05). The results indicated that virtual reality, by providing an interactive and controlled environment, leads to improvement and maintenance of emotional inhibition in children with ASD. Therefore, this method can be utilized as a complementary approach in the emotional rehabilitation of these children.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Davood Keshvari Hamid (Author); Majid Ebrahmipour; Samira Vakili (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
