ArticleJournal of autism and developmental disorders2026
Virtual Reality Intervention to Empower Autistic People to Interact With Police: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial for Autistic Teens and Adults.
Article in Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeInteractions with police officers can be a significant source of stress and anxiety, particularly for vulnerable and/or misunderstood populations. Here, we report a parallel randomized controlled clinical trial designed to examine and compare the effects of two different intervention programs designed to support autistic individuals as they prepare to interact with police officers.
methodsForty-seven autistic participants, aged 12 to 60 years, were randomized to participate in either the Floreo Police Safety Module virtual reality (VR) intervention or the BeSAFE The Movie video modeling intervention. For both conditions, three 45-min intervention sessions were completed an average of 9 days apart.
resultsResults revealed a significant intervention type by time interaction on fidgeting behavior during live interactions with police officers, indicating a reduction from pre-training to post-training that was specific to the VR intervention condition (estimate: 0.47, SE: 0.16, t = 2.95, p = 0.005). The statistical interaction between intervention type and time was not significant for participants' responding in accordance with expectations (p = .07) or overall behavior during live interactions with police officers (p = .23), but planned follow-up tests revealed improvements for both responding in accordance with expectations (estimate: -.21, SE: .07, t = -3.14, p = .02) and overall behavior (estimate: -.29, SE: .10, t = -3.04, p = .02) in the VR intervention condition specifically.
conclusionsOverall, these findings provide empirical support for practice as a means to empower autistic people to prepare for police interactions, with evidence suggesting that practicing police interactions using VR may be especially effective for driving skill acquisition.
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