On January 30th, I wrote a post about the Transporters. The short of it is that while is it great that people are looking into creating more resources for the social emotional development of children with ASD, why are we reinventing the wheel? I talked about how we use Thoas the Tank Engine to help Little Bug work on emotions.
Apparently, we aren't the only ones:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/27/autism.thomas.engine/index.html
Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect), a nonprofit that provides services to people diagnosed with the developmental disorder, unveiled the game on its Web site Tuesday.
The game asks players to recognize which engine has a sad face, or which is happy or angry.
Children with autism often have a difficult time distinguishing different facial expressions.
Each time a child plays the game, he/she is presented with a different sequence of emotions. In doing so, the game takes advantage of the single-mindedness of autistic children to assist in their development.
"It's a great way to help develop social and communication skills," said Anthony Warren of Aspect
A study conducted in the United Kingdom found that autistic children were far more fascinated by the television series, "Thomas and Friends," than they were with other fictional characters.
The study, by the National Autistic Society, summarized that the show held such appeal because of the clear facial expressions of the characters, the pacing of the program and the easy-to-follow story lines.
"We got those results down here, and we thought, how could we leverage that strength and give a little back to the community?" said Tom Punch with Haven Licensing, the company that handles licensing for the characters in Australia.
I have often joked that a singled minded obsession with Thomas should be added to the DSM for ASD.... maybe I wasn't that far off.
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