From the British Psychological Society press release via AlphaGalileo:
Empathy can be taught to children with autism by watching a specially designed cartoon. This is the finding of research discussed in the British Journal of Educational Psychology’s Educational Neuroscience monograph, published today, 9 January 2012, by the British Psychological Society.
The study was carried out by a team of psychologists including Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and Dr Emma Ashwin from Cambridge University in the UK, and Dr Ofer Golan, now at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
Everyday for four weeks children with autism, aged from four to seven years, watched The Transporters, a DVD designed to help children with autism and Asperger Syndrome to recognise emotions. The children were tested on their emotional vocabulary and recognition before and after the study. They were found to improve in all areas.
The children’s animated series features eight characters: toy vehicles featuring actors’ faces displaying emotions. The different toy vehicles (two trams, two cable cars, a chain ferry, a coach, a funicular railway, and a tractor) all moved on tracks or cables since children with autism prefer these over vehicles such as planes or cars that can move more freely.
Professor Baron-Cohen, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, said: “We would like to see teaching methods such as these become part of all classrooms. This would make schools better suited to people with autism.
“A little empathy on the part of designers of educational resources may help the development of empathy in children with autism”.