Social Virtual-reality on Enhancing Social Interaction Skills in Children With Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Social Interaction; Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder; Virtual Reality

Treatments: Behavioral: Traditional social skills training; Behavioral: Virtual reality

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05778526

HSEARS20221221003

Details and patient eligibility

About

The study targets children with diagnosed ADHD and aims to (1) develop a social virtual reality-based intervention, (2) investigate its effects on improving the social skills and executive functioning of inhibitions, emotional control and attention of the children compared to traditional social skills training and (3) evaluate the subjects acceptability and compliance with social VR training for enhancing social interaction skills. It is hypothesised that the social interaction skills of the participants in the social VR training group are likely to perform better than those in the traditional social skills training group. Participants in the waitlist control group will receive no change in social interaction skills compared with the two intervention groups.

Full description

The study will be a three-arm randomised controlled trial comparing the effects of social VR-based intervention with traditional social skills training on social skills and executive functioning of children with ADHD. Participants in the social VR intervention group and traditional social skill training group will receive 12 training sessions for 3 weeks (4 sessions per week), and participants in the waitlist control group will be asked to retain their usual lifestyles for 3 weeks.

Enrollment: 90 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 6 to 12 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• aged between 6 and 12 years
• ethnic Chinese
• residing in Hong Kong
• having received a diagnosis of ADHD by Child Assessment Service in Hong Kong or via private practice
• stable on pharmacological and/or psychological treatment for ADHD 8 weeks before baseline (determined by health care professionals on the basis of medication data and behavioural observation)
• no initiation or change of pharmacological treatment for ADHD during the intervention period
• the ability to read Chinese, and speak and listen to Cantonese by the child and by at least one of their parents or legal guardian
• willing to provide informed consent by both participants and one of their parents or legal guardian

Exclusion criteria

• comorbid autism
• mental retardation
• an estimated IQ lower than 85 (using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth Edition (Hong Kong) (WISC-IV(HK)))
• autism spectrum disorder (previously diagnosed by health care professionals)
• comorbid acute psychiatric disorder (previously diagnosed by health care professionals)
• with a severe physical disability (e.g., blindness, deafness) or learning disability (e.g., dyslexia).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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90 participants in 3 patient groups

Social VR Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Social VR intervention is developed to enhance the social interaction skills of children. The participants will wear a head-mounted display for the Social VR intervention. Each session of the Social VR intervention lasts for a maximum of 20 minutes to ensure the participants focus on the intervention and prevent causing any physical effect. The duration will be adjusted depending on the emotion of the participants during the intervention. The Social VR intervention will mainly help the participant to enhance their social interaction skills and executive function. The intervention contains three real-life virtual scenarios, including (1) classroom and playground, (2) MTR station and compartment, and (3) supermarket and restaurant. One scenario will be adopted in each session. The sequences of the scenarios used in each session will be the same for all participants.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Virtual reality

Traditional social skills training

Active Comparator group

Description:

An experienced SEN teacher will teach the participants social interaction skills through tradidactic instructions and role-play activities. Four modules will be covered in the 3-week training: (1) how to introduce yourself and basic social skills; (2) how to listen to others; (3) how to share with others; (4) learn to know how people feel and how to empathise. These modules have been applied in many studies (Braswell \& Bloomquist, 1991; Huang et al., 2015). The content of this training will be as similar as possible to the Social VR training. The training lasts 20 minutes which depends on the emotion of the participants.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Traditional social skills training

Waitlist control group

No Intervention group

Description:

The participants in this group will receive no training and they can participate in the social VR training after the intervention period. To ensure the consistency of the experiment, the participants are not allowed to initiate or change their pharmacological treatment during the 3-week intervention period.