A clinical trial at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University involving 40 children aged between four and seven found that it took only four weeks for those with high-functioning autism who watched the cartoons for 15 minutes a day to catch up with typically developing children of the same age in their emotional recognition skills.
The 'Transporters' DVD, launched by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of the Autism Research Centre and culture minister David Lammy, is the result of a project funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to find new ways to help children with autism learn about emotion. The series of 15, five-minute episodes is aimed at children aged two to eight, with each episode focusing on a different human emotion.
Professor Baron-Cohen said, 'A child with autism can be helped significantly by using tailored educational methods to ease them into reading faces.'
He said that while children with autism are often fascinated with vehicles, believed to be because they behave predictably, they tend to avoid looking at people's faces because they are unpredictable, leading to difficulties reading emotions on the human face and communication problems.
Claire Harcup, commissioning executive at the department's Culture Online service, said, 'The results are incredibly promising, but this is just preliminary research so it is still early days.'
The National Autistic Society has 30,000 copies of the Transporters DVD, including an information booklet for parents and carers, to give away free.
Call 020 7903 3563 or e-mail membership@nas.org.uk with the heading 'Transporters DVD'.
