Children with autism were able to improve their social skills by using a smartphone app paired with Google Glasses to help them understand the emotions conveyed in people’s facial expressions, according to a pilot study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Prior to participating in the study, Alex, 9, found it overwhelming to look people in the eye.
Gentle encouragement from his mother, Donji Cullenbine, hadn’t helped. “I would smile and say things like, ‘You looked at me three times today!’ But it didn’t really move the bar,” she said.
Using Google Glass transformed how Alex felt about looking at faces, Cullenbine said. “It was a game environment in which he wanted to win, he wanted to guess right, and he got an instant reward when he did.”
The therapy, described in Digital Medicine magazine, uses a Stanford-designed app that provides real-time cues about other people’s facial expressions to a child wearing Google Glass.
The device, which was linked with a smartphone through a local wireless network, consists of a glasses-like frame equipped with a camera to record the wearer’s field of view, as well as a small screen and a speaker to give the wearer visual and audio information.
As the child interacts with others, the app identifies and names their emotions through the Google Glass speaker or screen.
After one to three months of regular use, parents reported that children with autism made more eye contact and related better to others.
The treatment could help fill a major gap in autism care: Right now, because of a shortage of trained therapists, children may wait as long as 18 months after an autism diagnosis to begin receiving treatment.
“We have too few autism practitioners,” said the study’s senior author, Dennis Wall, PhD, associate professor of paediatrics and of biomedical data science.
Early autism therapy has been shown to be particularly effective, but many children aren’t treated quickly enough to get the maximum benefit, he said. “The only way to break through the problem is to create reliable, home-based treatment systems. It’s a really important unmet need.”
Autism is a developmental disorder that affects 1 in 59 children in the United States, with a higher prevalence in boys.
It is characterised by social and communication deficits and repetitive behaviours.
GULF TIMES
