PanoVR: A Longitudinal Human-Computer Interaction Study on Promoting Skill Transfer in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder through Panoramic Multi-sensory Virtual Reality Training

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children often experience substantial difficulty adapting to unfamiliar environments and complex sensory input. To support skill execution and transfer across varying contexts, we developed PanoVR, a panoramic virtual reality (VR) system that gradually modulates multi-sensory stimulation. In a four-week longitudinal study, 11 children with ASD completed training sessions progressing from familiar to semi-familiar and unfamiliar scenes. Behavioral results showed continuous improvement in task performance, while behavioral patterns remain stable, indicating that increased environmental complexity did not introduce additional variability. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) analyses revealed significant reductions in global effective connectivity (EC) and decreased between-participant variability, suggesting a shift toward more efficient, lower-load coordination across brain regions. These findings indicate that gradual multi-sensory modulation can enhance behavioral performance and neural efficiency, enabling strategies learned in familiar settings to transfer to more challenging contexts. The results provide practical implications for designing adaptive VR-based interventions for ASD.