Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Dec 12;364(1535):3567-74.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0191.

Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions?

Simon Baron-Cohen  1 , Ofer Golan, Emma Ashwin
Affiliations

Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions?

Simon Baron-Cohen et al. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

Children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have major difficulties in recognizing and responding to emotional and mental states in others' facial expressions. Such difficulties in empathy underlie their social-communication difficulties that form a core of the diagnosis. In this paper we ask whether aspects of empathy can be taught to young children with ASC. We review a study that evaluated The Transporters, an animated series designed to enhance emotion comprehension in children with ASC. Children with ASC (4-7 years old) watched The Transporters every day for four weeks. Participants were tested before and after intervention on emotional vocabulary and emotion recognition at three levels of generalization. The intervention group improved significantly more than a clinical control group on all task levels, performing comparably to typical controls at time 2. The discussion centres on how vehicles as mechanical systems may be one key reason why The Transporters caused the improved understanding and recognition of emotions in children with ASC. The implications for the design of autism-friendly interventions are also explored.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Fractions of empathy; adapted from Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright (2004).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Examples of questions from two of the three emotion recognition task levels. (a) Level 1 task: match familiar scenes from the series with familiar faces. (b) Level 3 task: match novel scenes and faces using real human faces.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Graphs to show mean scores (with standard error bars) for each group on the four tasks. (a) Situation–expression matching task—level 1. (b) Situation–expression matching task—level 2. (c) Situation–expression matching task—level 3. (d) Emotional vocabulary task. *p < 0.001. Blue, ASC intervention group; Magenta, ASC control group; yellow, typical control group.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. APA 1994DSM-IV diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 4th edn. Washington, DC, USA: American Psychiatric Association
    1. Ashwin E., Ashwin C., Rhydderch D., Howells J., Baron-Cohen S.2009Eagle-eyed visual acuity: an experimental investigation of enhanced perception in autism. Biol. Psychiatry 65, 17–21 (doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.06.012) - DOI - PubMed
    1. Auyeung B., Wheelwright S., Allison C., Atkinson M., Samaranwickrema N., Baron-Cohen S.In press The children's empathy quotient (EQ-C) and systemizing quotient (SQ-C): sex differences in typical development and in autism spectrum conditions. J. Autism Dev. Disord. (doi:10.1007/s10803-009-0772-x) - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baron-Cohen S.1995Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind Boston, MA, USA: MIT Press/Bradford Books
    1. Baron-Cohen S.2002The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends Cogn. Sci 6, 248–254 (doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(02)01904-6) - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources