1. Baron-Cohen S, Golan O, Ashwin E. {{Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions?}} {Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci};2009 (Dec 12);364(1535):3567-3574.
Children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have major difficulties in recognizing and responding to emotional and mental states in others’ facial expressions. Such difficulties in empathy underlie their social-communication difficulties that form a core of the diagnosis. In this paper we ask whether aspects of empathy can be taught to young children with ASC. We review a study that evaluated The Transporters, an animated series designed to enhance emotion comprehension in children with ASC. Children with ASC (4-7 years old) watched The Transporters every day for four weeks. Participants were tested before and after intervention on emotional vocabulary and emotion recognition at three levels of generalization. The intervention group improved significantly more than a clinical control group on all task levels, performing comparably to typical controls at time 2. The discussion centres on how vehicles as mechanical systems may be one key reason why The Transporters caused the improved understanding and recognition of emotions in children with ASC. The implications for the design of autism-friendly interventions are also explored.
2. Picard RW. {{Future affective technology for autism and emotion communication}}. {Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci};2009 (Dec 12);364(1535):3575-3584.
People on the autism spectrum often experience states of emotional or cognitive overload that pose challenges to their interests in learning and communicating. Measurements taken from home and school environments show that extreme overload experienced internally, measured as autonomic nervous system (ANS) activation, may not be visible externally: a person can have a resting heart rate twice the level of non-autistic peers, while outwardly appearing calm and relaxed. The chasm between what is happening on the inside and what is seen on the outside, coupled with challenges in speaking and being pushed to perform, is a recipe for a meltdown that may seem to come ‘out of the blue’, but in fact may have been steadily building. Because ANS activation both influences and is influenced by efforts to process sensory information, interact socially, initiate motor activity, produce meaningful speech and more, deciphering the dynamics of ANS states is important for understanding and helping people on the autism spectrum. This paper highlights advances in technology that can comfortably sense and communicate ANS arousal in daily life, allowing new kinds of investigations to inform the science of autism while also providing personalized feedback to help individuals who participate in the research.
