A novel software application for Google Glass improved social skills

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A Wearable Emotion-Recognition Intervention for Children with Autism

Although the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has increased in recent decades, therapy availability has not kept pace. Children with ASD face wait times of up to 18 months to start intensive therapies such as applied behavior analysis. Computer scientists have suggested that wearable technologies might be an answer to this problem, since children can use them anywhere for in-the-moment support.

In one such effort, researchers developed a Google Glass application (Superpower Glass) that would identify the emotion of the person in view and immediately display an emoji of that emotion as well as speak the name of emotion via the glasses. The program could be adapted (for example, to mute the emotion naming) through an app on a parent's smartphone.

To test the approach, investigators randomized 71 children with ASD (89% boys; age, 6-12 years) to usual care or to the Superpower Glass intervention, which included playing emotion-identification games with family members for 20 minutes four times a week for 6 weeks. Among the 40 children assigned to the intervention, 8 found that using the device was too challenging, and 1 found it too warm to wear. A battery of measures used to gauge treatment response showed that children assigned to the intervention had significant improvements in adaptive socialization skills and in the ability to guess emotions.

by: Jenny Radesky, MD

link: https://www.jwatch.org/na48815/2019/03/26/wearable-emotion-recognition-intervention-children-with?query=etoc_jwpeds&jwd=000013260742&jspc=MPD