Intervention for Autistic Children with Behaviours of Concern: Virtual Reality-Based Music Therapy

The research purposes are threefold: (1) to develop
insight into the process of aggression among children; (2) to design a non-intrusive intervention using Virtual Reality Based Music Therapy (VRBMT) to calm aggressive behaviour of children with autism; (3) to carry out a study to evaluate the effectiveness of VRBMT for autistic children. The current research focuses on the social, communication and emotional difficulties experienced by children with autism. The hypothesis is that VRBMT can significantly reduce anxiety and aggression.VRBMT adopts virtual reality technology and a biofeedback system to collect, analyse and respond accordingly to the client’s emotional change. In the current research, music therapy and social skills training are applied through VRBMT as an intervention to reduce aggressive emotional responses. VRBMT consists of three parts: (1) part one adopts receptive music therapy, guided imagery, and mindfulness techniques to calm clients; (2) part two adopts active music therapy, which allows the clients to play with the virtually created musical instruments to express their feelings and emotions, and to release stress
and anxiety; (3) part three engages the clients in three stages of virtual travel training to develop necessary adaptive skills and manage anxiety in public community spaces. In addition, a biofeedback system will be used to measure the client’s electrodermal activities, which will trigger stimuli like background noise based on the client’s anxiety level.