A project at the Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University has helped a small group of autistic children understand more about human emotions.
People with autism often struggle to identify and understand feelings, and are extremely reluctant to look at people's faces. The Centre has used specially created cartoons to help teach the youngsters about facial expressions and the underlying emotions.
Many autistic children are fascinated by trains and cars and the project capitalises on this fascination with vehicles by grafting real people's faces onto cartoons of vehicles. A DVD animation series, called The Transporters, has short 15 minute episodes each introducing the idea of new emotions, like happiness, anger, fear, kindness and pride and includes an interactive quiz, which helps the children learn about the emotions.
Professor Baron-Cohen who led the research, stated that there had been a 52% improvement in the ability of the children to recognise emotions. "They had caught up to the same level as a typically developing child on tests of emotional recognition," he said.
The DVDs are now being given to around 30,000 other families with autistic children between the ages of two and eight. It's a bit too early to say whether there are any long-term benefits but researchers are certainly hoping to make a real difference to the lives of autistic children.
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