Virtual Worlds Turn Therapeutic for Autistic Disorders

The 19-year-old woman glares at her computer screen, furious because her roommate wants a friend to move in with them, rent-free. But instead of calmly asserting herself, she begins yelling, and her virtual world is put on pause.

Then the woman replays the encounter, which occurred not with a live roommate, but between digital characters, or avatars, guided by a clinician in the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas. The woman and the clinician consider how she

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