Recognition of Emotions for People with Autism: An Approach to Improve Skills

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder refers to a neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by repetitive behavior patterns, impaired social interaction, and impaired verbal and nonverbal communication. The ability to recognize mental states from facial expressions plays an important role in both social interaction and interpersonal communication. Thus, in recent years, several proposals have been presented, aiming to contribute to the improvement of emotional skills in order to improve social interaction. In this paper, a game is presented to support the development of emotional skills in people with autism spectrum disorder. The software used helps to develop the ability to recognize and express six basic emotions: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear. Based on the theory of facial action coding systems and digital image processing techniques, it is possible to detect facial expressions and classify them into one of the six basic emotions. Experiments were performed using four public domain image databases (CK+, FER2013, RAF-DB, and MMI) and a group of children with autism spectrum disorder for evaluating the existing emotional skills. The results showed that the proposed software contributed to improvement of the skills of detection and recognition of the basic emotions in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Evaluation of an Interactive Computer-Enabled Tabletop Learning Tool for Children with Special Needs

“…Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that involves persistent challenges in social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted/repetitive behaviors. Previous studies (Bandrés et al, 2022), (Gillies-Walker et al, 2022), (Dantas & Nascimentodo, 2022) showed that the use of computing technologies can complement the learning activities of students’ with autism through improved communication, better interactions and enhanced skills. Consequently, a significant number of research (Aburukba et al, 2017), (Chien et al, 2015), (Winoto & Tang, 2017), (Leonidis et al, 2017) focused on the development of interactive digital learning tools, also known as assistive technologies, to enable interactions and interoperability between the person diagnosed with ASD and their caregivers.…”