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Developmental and Learning Disabilities

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Virtual Reality for Psychological and Neurocognitive Interventions

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Abstract

People with developmental disabilities are usually one of the last groups to benefit from advances in technology yet special education was quick to adopt information technology even providing exemplars for mainstream education (Lilley 2004). Educational virtual environments were being developed in special schools and adult training centres when virtual reality was still a novel technology in education (Standen and Brown 2004, 2005, 2006). Virtual environments had many characteristics that suited them perfectly to applications for people with developmental disabilities. This explains why they were so readily adopted. However, technology has moved on rapidly since those days with information technology providing smaller, cheaper and mobile solutions. People with developmental disabilities are still collaborating with researchers in the development of novel applications using the most recent technology. This chapter will review the work on new technologies that have been developed for first of all training and education and secondly for therapy and rehabilitation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Rehabilitation and Ageing, University of Nottingham, Medical School, QMC, Nottingham, UK

    P. J. Standen

  2. School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Lane, Nottingham, UK

    David J. Brown

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  1. P. J. Standen
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Correspondence to P. J. Standen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA

    Albert “Skip” Rizzo

  2. Université du Québec en Outaouais, Gatineau, QC, Canada

    Stéphane Bouchard

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Standen, P.J., Brown, D.J. (2019). Developmental and Learning Disabilities. In: Rizzo, A.“., Bouchard, S. (eds) Virtual Reality for Psychological and Neurocognitive Interventions. Virtual Reality Technologies for Health and Clinical Applications. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9482-3_12

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