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Research-based software shows benefits for children with autism and Asperger syndrome

April 19, 2002

A new software program is showing significant improvements in the ability of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to recognise and predict emotions from facial expressions after only eight half hour sessions.

Dr Miriam Silver from St James` University Hospital in Leeds, UK, has developed the `Emotion Trainer` CD Rom from her PhD research, and believes the program will help children and adolescents with ASD to improve their social and communication skills.

"Over recent years there has been a welcome improvement in the diagnosis of ASD," she said. "However, there has been a disparity between the amount of money spent on improving diagnosis and exploring possible causes, and the educational resources available to health care professionals and families to help the child after diagnosis has been made."

Children with ASD are acknowledged to show more enthusiasm for computer use than toys. They can have increased learning and motivation and reduced behaviour problems when using a computer compared to personal instruction. Dr Silver created Emotion Trainer as a way to optimise the use of computers given that teaching time with educational and social services professionals is limited and expensive, and also as a resource for parents and carers to use at home.

Emotion Trainer is a simple question and answer program, used with minimal or no supervision. Using randomly-selected photographs of different facial expressions built into an errorless learning pattern, children and adolescents have shown significant improvements in emotion recognition after an average of only eight half-hour sessions using the program. It also builds on the learned skill to cover situations and events, individual desires, thoughts and beliefs and personal preferences.

"Feedback from the children showed they enjoyed using the program and found it easy to use. There is also encouraging anecdotal evidence that they are generalizing these learned skills into real-life social situations, which, if proven, is very exciting," said Dr Silver.

Emotion Trainer has been developed through Leeds Innovations, the University of Leeds` technology transfer company.

Leeds Innovations

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