Developing an interactive social-emotional toolkit for autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

A development process consisting of participatory design and iterative implementation was carried out to create a framework for interactive emotion-learning, the Interactive Social-Emotional Toolkit (iSET). iSET is a novel intervention consisting of live video recording and annotation software for use during social interactions as well as video review and discussion components. It is suitable for persons diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) including Autistic Disorder (AD) and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), the target groups for the intervention, as well as for persons with Asperger's Syndrome (AS). The iSET intervention was tested with a group of AD/PDD-NOS participants (n=20) with mean age 22.7 ± 8.55 years; these students were divided into an experimental group to test the iSET paradigm (n=10) and a control group following Golan and Baron-Cohen's Mind Reading DVD intervention approach (n=10). An age- and sex-matched group of neurotypical participants (n=20) were also tested with the pretest measures. Preliminary results show an increasing ability to use the iSET materials and to capture videos that neurotypical teachers considered "good examples" of emotions considered in the intervention.