In an interesting 2008 study, Vivanti and Rogers ruled out both motor impairment and following the task as reasons why children with autism have difficulty in an imitation task.  One finding that could be important is that the study participants with autism spent less time looking at the face.  This leads to the interesting idea that learning to better read emotions, an important component of social interactions,  might also improve imitation, which is another key component of social interactions:

“It could be that if people with autism could be better at reading emotion they might naturally start to imitate their models the way like other people do.”
—Sally Rogers, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences

We can now quantitatively test our hypothesis that FaceSay increases attention to the area around the eyes in interactions with other people!  After months of pilot testing, Researchers at the University of Alabama, Birmingham recently placed an order for a an eye tracking system that is ideal for unobtrusively measuring where the study participant is looking when interacting with another person.   Attention to the eyes - which does not necessarily equate to eye contact - is thought to be important for reading emotions and possibly imitation, both of which are key components of social interactions.

I will be presenting a technology demo/poster presentation at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Chicago in May.  "FaceSay - Social Skills Games That Work" is scheduled for Friday, May  8, 2009, 9:00 AM
At the Chicago Hilton, in the Boulevard room.

Undergraduate student Amy Schrembs and her supervisor, professor Rodney D. Clark, from Allegheny College will present a poster on her interesting multiple-baseline study of FaceSay , An Application of Computer-Based Training on Emotion Discrimination in Children with Autism: A Comparison to Non Computer-Based Training, at the ABA International conference in Phoenix, AZ, May 22-26th.   Congratulations, Amy!

If you are an undergrad, grad or PhD student interested in studying FaceSay.  I'd be happy to provide a free license for the study.  Contact me for details.

Casey 

Simon Baron-Cohen's talented team announced results from a 20 student study of Transporter's, a neat DVD aimed at teaching kids emotions. 

The good news is that the autistic children were able to match the game performance of neurotypical students after just a few weeks.   Unfortunately, as with the earlier 6 student study of transporters, and with all other studies I've seen except for FaceSay, there was no measured benefit to everyday life, where it counts.

As Baron-Cohen cautions in the press release ...
"...while autistic children might be able to recognize emotions better after watching the DVD, that would not necessarily change their behavior at home or on the playground."

Unlike the FaceSay study , where parents reported students' behavior improved at home  (see slide 12), and blinded grad students measured improved behavior with other students on the playground - e.g. increased eye contact, more initiation of social interactions, and fewer negative behaviors (see slide 13) -  this Transporters study  showed improved performance only with animated characters in the game:

"Close generalisation of skills - children were asked to match animated familiar Transporters faces to situations they had not seen before. Distant generalisation to real [animated] human faces - children were asked to match animated unfamiliar faces to unfamiliar situations. "

In a spring article in the UAB Magazine, Dr. Biasini talked about the benefits of computer based interventions like FaceSay, and the encouraging gains seen in the study. 

"Also, the computer tasks performed by children in the study were brief in comparison to the time that might have been spent in social groups to achieve the same gains—we saw benefits that might have taken months to achieve in social groups."
-- UAB Magazine, Spring 2008

I hope FaceSay can be used as an "amplifier"/"accellerator" for group and person to person social work of every sort.  For example, I would bet - er, my hypothesis is - that the Gazing excercises in ABA, the "Thinking with the Eyes" sessions in Michele Garcia Winner's "Social Thinking" program and many others might see larger and/or faster gains when done in conjunction w/ FaceSay.

A nice interview w/ the UAB researchers, Dr. Biasini and Dr. Hopkins, and one of the study participants, 11 yo MaryLeigh Wear, is airing on some local TV stations.  It's great to see how tickled she is with the silly games :-).   They omitted her best quote, though.  The interviewer asked, "What did you learn from playing FaceSay?".  MaryLeigh replied, "I learned I need to look at both halves of the face.  I've been looking at just the bottom half."

Dr. Biasini and Dr. Hopkins turned at looked at each other, half wondering if the other had coached MaryLeigh to say that :-).  With my Montessori-sh "revelation vs explanation" approach, I never say that in the games.  But it's exactly the sort of "Aha moment" that I hoped for.

Read one of the news stories (cached on google)

See the UAB Researchers and one of the students talk about FaceSay's silly games and real benefits.
Watch the TV Interview

Read an interesting interview that first gave me the idea that such an "Aha" might be both possible and a big help.

Dec. 2007- UAB completed a randomized controlled trial w/ over 80 4yo Neurotypical preschoolers using two of the FaceSay games - "Amazing Gazing" and "Bandaid" Clinic - as the Intervention.  The kids loved the games and saw gains in Face Recognition Skills, but not Emotion Recognition (the facial expression matching game was not part of the study).  Generalization was not measured.   Trista Perez, the Primary Investigator, successfully defended her Master's thesis related to the study.

The study supports my notion/hope that FaceSay could be used inclusively for all 4-6 yo students, to provide a benefit to a) neurotypical children (learning to follow a teacher's gaze), b) children already identified on the spectrum and maybe most importantly, to c)  children who not be identified until 2nd or 3rd grade.