Training facial expression production in children on the autism spectrum.
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show deficits in their ability to produce facial expressions. In this study, a group of children with ASD and IQ-matched, typically developing (TD) children were trained to produce "happy" and "angry" expressions with the FaceMaze computer game. FaceMaze uses an automated computer recognition system that analyzes the child's facial expression in real time. Before and after playing the Angry and Happy versions of FaceMaze, children posed "happy" and "angry" expressions. Naïve raters judged the post-FaceMaze "happy" and "angry" expressions of the ASD group as higher in quality than their pre-FaceMaze productions. Moreover, the post-game expressions of the ASD group were rated as equal in quality as the expressions of the TD group.
Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3050, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P5, Canada, igordon@uvic.ca.
Iris
I
Gordon
Matthew D
MD
Pierce
Marian S
MS
Bartlett
James W
JW
Tanaka
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000523:psychology*; D003194:Computer-Assisted Instruction; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018910:Video Games; D055815:Young Adult