# Enhancing Social Skills in Autism Students with Augmented-Reality Picturebooks
## 2 Literature Review
### Augmented Reality  
Augmented reality refers to the technology of augmenting virtual objects into the real environment, and when a pre-set picture appears in front of the lens, the corresponding virtual object will appear, and there are AR devices that can be used through mobile apps. Moreover, AR systems have three characteristics: \"combining the virtual and real world\", \"instant interaction\", and \"must be in three-dimensional space\" [35]. In recent years, there has been research on the application of augmented reality in the teaching of special education students, such as attention [36], vocabulary learning [37], social skills [31], etc., and the results found that augmented-reality teaching can improve students' learning motivation, attention, and eye contact. For example, the study of [PERSON] et al. (2022) found that the use of augmented-reality technology can effectively improve the joint attention of children with ASD, and its effect can be maintained and generalized to real situations [38]. [PERSON] et al. (2022) created the \"AReal-Vocab\" augmented-reality mobile app to help children with ASD learn English vocabulary in a more interesting way [39]. [PERSON] et al. (2020) reviewed 16 studies on augmented reality from 2008 to 2018 and pointed out that the effect of learning skills in AR is the best, followed by social skills [17]. [PERSON] et al. (2020) also found that most studies explored the application of AR technology to improve the social interaction ability of ASD (55%) and pointed out that AR technology can be classified as an evidence-based practice [40]. For example, [PERSON] et al. (2015), using AR combined with 3D animation of self-facial expressions, explored ASD adolescents to understand the changes in their facial expressions in different situations [41]. The results showed that AR intervention can improve ASD's recognition and correct response to facial emotions. After that, [PERSON] et al. (2016) used AR and video demonstrations combined with storybooks to explore the attention of ASD adolescents to nonverbal social cues [42]. The study had also found that AR intervention can improve ASD's attention to nonverbal social cues and help them understand the facial expressions and emotions of characters in storybooks. [PERSON] et al. (2018) used AR with a tabletop role-playing game (AR-RPG) to explore the appropriate responses of children with ASD when interacting with others, and the results showed that the system could help them improve their social interaction skills [43; 44]. [PERSON] et al. (2017), in a review from 2012 to 2016 for AR applications in ASD research, found that social skills and emotion recognition were the most commonly used areas of AR [22]. It can be observed that AR can effectively stimulate students' learning motivation, enhance the interaction between students and real situations, and is easy to operate [17; 22]. Picturebooks have been proven to be a suitable reading type for children with ASD and can enhance their emotions and empathy [34]; [PERSON] (2009) also found that when teachers implemented picturebook intervention for students with intellectual disabilities, the abilities of all students were significantly improved [30]. However, [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2023) found that young children understand picturebooks with moving pictures, music, and sounds better than static picturebooks [45]. In addition, the use of augmented-reality technology in research is mostly for the intervention of social skills of students with ASD, and all of them have good results [17; 22; 40]. [PERSON] et al. (2015, 2016) and [PERSON] et al. (2018) used augmented reality combined with three-dimensional animations, video modeling storybook (ARVMS), and concept map (CM) strategies to find that there was an increase in ASD's understanding of facial emotion recognition and response as well as non-verbal social cues [41; 42; 43].