Cartoon helps autistic children understand emotion
Research found that The Transporters, a new series narrated by Stephen Fry, helped youngsters recognise key emotions after a trial period of just four weeks.
The DVD was watched by a test group of 20 autistic children, who are known to have difficulties in relating to other people because of troubles in reading emotions.
Featuring human faces “grafted” onto colourful cable cars, trucks and trains, the DVD will now be made available for free from the National Autistic Society to parents in Britain.
Speaking at the Royal Society, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, said that parents had noticed a change in their children after just one month.
He said: “The aim is that through hours of repetitive TV watching, children with autism, instead of turning away from faces as they usually do because they are so unpredictable, thus missing out on crucial experience in learning about emotional expressions, will tune into faces without even realising they are doing so”.
He added that children with autism, which affects around 1% of all youngsters according to research in The Lancet last year, warmed to the theme of transport in the DVD.
“Children with autism love watching films about vehicles because, according to one theory, they are strong ‘systemisers’,” he said.
Carole Scibor, 39, from Cambridge, whose five-year-old son Tom was involved in the research study, said it had helped him to feel more empathy with the family.
Copies of the DVD can be requested via www.transporters.tv.
