Hopkins' et. al. RCT Efficacy Study
Maria Hopkins, now an associate professor at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, designed and lead this great study for her dissertation in 2007, with help from her advisor Fred Biasini. They included 49 students from two nearby private special needs schools (Mitchells' Place and Glenwood), half with Aspergers/HFA and half with classic autism The students ranged from 6 to 14 years old. There was a real control group. All the students got to leave class and play on the computer (fun!). The students played FaceSay or the control - TuxePaint, a drawing program without any social content - twice a week for about 6 weeks (10-12 sessions). They used a touch screen. For the students with classic autism, the grad students provided hand-over-hand work and cheerios incentives. Otherwise, the grad students just observed. Maria and Fred included a robust range of measures
Higher IQ correlated with better results on all measures, except the parent self report. The playground measures are a breakthrough for the kids and the field. The participants who played FaceSay initiated more interactions and made more eye contact with their peers, and engaged in fewer negative behaviors. The grad student observers were blind to who was in the treatment or control group. Nearly six years later, in December 2012, the results have not been matched.
- Emotion Recognition (Ekman/Friesen photos)
- Face Recogntition (Benton)
- Social Validity (Parent SSRS)
- Blinded Playground Observations (Hauk, et al)
Higher IQ correlated with better results on all measures, except the parent self report. The playground measures are a breakthrough for the kids and the field. The participants who played FaceSay initiated more interactions and made more eye contact with their peers, and engaged in fewer negative behaviors. The grad student observers were blind to who was in the treatment or control group. Nearly six years later, in December 2012, the results have not been matched.
Abstract
This study assessed the efficacy of FaceSay, a computer-based social skills training program for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This randomized controlled study (N = 49) indicates that providing children with low-functioning autism (LFA) and high functioning autism (HFA) opportunities to practice attending to eye gaze, discriminating facial expressions and recognizing faces and emotions in FaceSay’s structured environment with interactive, realistic avatar assistants improved their social skills abilities. The children with LFA demonstrated improvements in two areas of the intervention: emotion recognition and social interactions. The children withHFAdemonstrated improvements in all three areas: facial recognition, emotion recognition, and social interactions. These findings, particularly the measured improvements to social interactions in a natural environment, are encouraging.
Follow-up Interviews
Here are neat interviews with two of the participants. MaryLeigh is 11yo in the WebMD video interview, done one year after the study. She thinks the Bandaid Clinic game is silly :-). Mitchell's interview, which you may watched on the home page, is 4 years after the study. It's really neat to see how closely he follows his mom's face.
MaryLeigh
When asked what she learned 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, at the mouth." This is a great "Aha"/insight, similar to Temple Grandin's discovery in her 50's that "there are all these secret face signals". |
MitchellAt about 1:15 into the video, Mitchell is sitting with his mom for the interview. He seems really tuned in to the non-verbal channel :-).
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