While past research has indicated that a tool like this could make substantial headway in teaching kids to read expressions, Baron-Cohen and his colleagues also tested the DVD in a peer-reviewed study that will be published this year in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. The data were based on three groups of around 20 children each, all between the ages of 5 and 8. Groups 1 and 2 were made up of high-functioning autistic children, all of similar age, with similar IQs, language skills, and parental education levels. Group 3 was made up of nonautistic children of a similar age.The first group watched the video for 15 minutes every day for four weeks, while the second and third groups did not watch it at all. Group 1 was then tested on basic recall of the faces they’d seen, recognition of expressions by Transporters characters in situations not shown in the DVD, and expressions on completely new faces.
The first group was found to have improved on all three levels. In fact, most of the children in Group 1 improved significantly more than Group 2, and even caught up with the “normal” group in their ability to recognize emotions.
Parents using the DVD have gushed about its effectiveness on the Transporters Web site and various autism blogs. Some parents even cite the series’ effects as a near miracle. “It’s been astonishing,” said Caron Freeborn, a mother in Cambridge, England, whose older son, Jude, was diagnosed with autism when he was 3. While he has learned to speak with the help of a psychologist and child development expert, his understanding of emotions is extremely limited. Around five months ago his mother purchased the DVD on recommendations from local autism groups, and he now watches with a parent around twice a week.
“Before, the only emotions Jude understood were happy and sad, and he didn’t understand that other people could feel happy or sad when you didn’t,” Freeborn says. “Now he has a much more complex understanding of happy and sad, and he’s even starting to understand disgusted, which is useful since he has a younger brother.” Plus there’s the emotional side benefit Freeborn says the video has brought to her family: a better relationship between Jude and his father. “He’ll sit with his dad and properly watch and talk about it, so it’s not just about accessing the emotions on the program but also making a connection between him and his dad,” Freeborn says.
Meanwhile, some in the scientific community have had more tepid reactions, with experts raising questions about the DVD’s effectiveness in treating the disorder. “The idea is that the kids will be interested in the video because it capitalizes on systematic thinking—these are mechanical cars running on lines, so their motion is predictable,” says Mark Strauss, director of the Infant & Toddler Development Lab at the University of Pittsburgh and a leading researcher in the cognitive abilities of autistic children. “[But] a lot of things in the video were very unpredictable—the cuts and the motions and the action. Even as an adult, I found it difficult to follow.”
Jim Tanaka, a professor of psychology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and a leading face recognition researcher, questions whether aspects of the facial expressions in the series are too subtle to resonate with autistic children. “Kids with autism have appreciable deficits in emotion recognition, particularly with making discriminations in the eyes,” he says. “[But] they’re good at making discriminations in the mouth area. The social emotions in The Transporters are pretty subtle, and may not get kids to see those eye differences.”
Also in question is whether the results shown in Baron-Cohen’s study represent just a temporary bump in improvement versus a deep and lasting increase in emotional recognition. “There are a lot of questions about whether it works, both for low-functioning versus high-functioning [children], in terms of maybe just giving a momentary improvement early on,” Strauss says.
One way to find out, of course, is through bigger and more detailed studies. Baron-Cohen’s results were based on a small sample over a short time period and were unusually positive—notable particularly since the research team consisted of the Transporters developers themselves.
