virtual reality (VR):
| keep | hold down |
| feel comfortable as part of the group | fit in |
| make (someone) feel very bad | eat away |
| stop | break off from |
| finished by | ended ups |
| see | bump into |
| experience | go through |
| relax | Calm down |
| encounter or face difficulties or challenges | come up against |
1. The doors shut with a thud behind me as I walk into the shopping centre. Immediately, there’s a buzz of noise. I can hear two or three different types of music being played in various shops. A woman walks past me, carrying lots of shopping bags. I can hear the sound of them rubbing against each other. I try to shrug it off, but it’s made me feel a bit more anxious. The lights are too bright. A man is shaking a pot full of coins – I think he’s collecting money for charity. It’s really loud. I carry on through the shopping centre. I can smell fried food. I bump into a friend, but I can’t stop to talk to her because it’s all so overwhelming. I need to calm down. I need to get out of here.
2. This is a description of what it might feel like for some people with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) to go to a shopping centre. While people's experiences vary a lot, one of the key issues for many individuals with autism is a hypersensitivity to sights, sounds, smells and tastes, which can make a simple activity, such as going shopping extremely stressful. Some people are able to cope with this kind-of sensory overload reasonably well, though the stress might eat away at them inside. But for others, they end up having a meltdown - in other words, they get upset or angry. This can make it difficult to fit in with or to keep friends because other people just don't understand the pressure that has led the person with autism to act in this way. It can also lead to people with autism having problems at school or with holding down a job, as they may come across as unreliable or bad-tempered.
3. In order to help people understand what it's like to have autism, could Virtual Reality (VR) help? Virtual Reality is a computer-generated simulation of an experience, which is seen in 3D, and which can feel almost exactly like really being in that situation. According to Chris Milk in his TED talk, Virtual Reality connects humans to other humans in a way which can change people's perceptions of each other: Perhaps in response to such ideas, the National Autistic Society has developed a VR experience to help people understand what sensory overload feels like. People can watch the video using special 3D glasses, which take them more fully into the experience. So far, it has had six million views, and the comments certainly indicate that it's having a powerful effect.
4. The potential impact of VR in helping us to understand one another and the world around us is exciting. For example, some people went through the virtual experience of chopping down a tree. Afterwards, the researcher accidentally' spilt his drink and those people who had been chopping down trees' reached for fewer paper napkins, suggesting that their experience had subconsciously encouraged them to stop wasting paper.
5 VR has also been used to give people the experience of being disabled, or being in a flood. But can these experiences really help us to walk in someone else's shoes? A major difference between simulated and actual experiences is that we volunteer to put on the VR headset. We can break off at any time and go back to our normal lives, whereas the people whose lives we're experiencing don't have that luxury. And, while we can experience the sounds and sights of a flood, we don't come up against the same difficulties.
