Transporters Study is Encouraging, but Still No Benefit in Everyday Life

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. "