The impact of virtual reality on parents awareness of cognitive perceptions of a dyslectic child
Parents of dyslexic children encounter many difficulties in understanding and accepting their childrens disability. This affects the childs self-image and the way s/he copes (Hallahan and Kauffman 1991; Einat 2003). The goal of this study was to develop VR immersive simulated states. The simulation was designed to help the parents of dyslexic children experience the kind of errors their children make when reading. Two groups of parents of dyslexic children participated in this experiment, an experimental group (N?=?37), which experienced ten 3D worlds simulating different kinds of reading errors, and a control group (N?=?30), that watched a movie describing and explaining similar errors. All the subjects were administered a cognitive questionnaire (Shavit 2005) before and after the intervention. In addition, the participants in the experimental group were interviewed before and after the intervention. The results indicate that experiencing a variety of simulated types of dyslexia with virtual reality can bring about improvement in parents awareness of the dyslexic childs cognitive experiences, and that this improvement is significantly greater than that achieved by watching a film about dyslexia.
virtual reality parents of dyslexic children reading impairment awareness of dyslexia