ShareThisThink Thomas the Tank Engine with human faces.
That's the concept behind "The Transporters," a new animated video series designed to teach autistic children how to recognize and interpret emotions.
The 15 five-minute episodes feature the faces of human actors superimposed on digitally animated vehicles that range from trolleys and a tractor to a ferry and an incline car. The programs move progressively from stories that deal with simpler emotions, like anger and happiness, to more complex ones, like disgust and embarrassment.
For instance, in the early episode "Nigel's Slow Day," the narrator says that Nigel the bus "loved traveling fast. It made Nigel happy," and the actor smiles broadly to demonstrate that. Later, different obstacles slow Nigel down, and he glowers as the narrator says, " 'This new route is longer and will take me more time,' Nigel said angrily."
In a later episode, "Jennie's Smelly Adventure," Jennie the trolley agrees to pick up some freight for her friend Barney the tractor, and it turns out to be a load of reeking fish. "That's disgusting," Jennie says. "I don't want to take that smelly container with me."
The series was developed last year in Britain by noted autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen and his team at Cambridge University's Autism Research Centre, along with Changing Media Development Ltd., the company that produced the DVDs with funding from the British government.
The DVDs build on Baron-Cohen's theory that autism is a manifestation of the "extreme male brain" -- a kind of thinking that gravitates toward predictable objects and systems, but struggles with emotions and social interactions.
In a general sense, he said, "boys, in terms of which toys they choose to play with, are more likely to choose mechanical toys, whereas girls may be much more interested in playing in social groups or creating social stories with their toys."
Boys outnumber girls about 4 to 1 among those diagnosed with autism, and there already is anecdotal evidence that children with autism are particularly attracted to "Thomas the Tank Engine," the long-running public television animated series, he said.
"What's different about 'The Transporters' is that it uses real faces of actors that have been grafted on to the mechanical objects," Baron-Cohen said. "The mechanical objects have captured the children's attention, but typically young children with autism avoid looking at people's faces or expressions, so it's not that much of a surprise that they are not expert at recognizing emotions later on."
Because the government largely funded the project, 40,000 copies of the British version of "The Transporters" were offered for free in the United Kingdom to parents of children between 2 and 8, and to Baron-Cohen's surprise, they were all snatched up within three months.
The American version of the series, released last month, sells for $57.50, with a quarter of the proceeds going to autism research groups and charities, including Autism Speaks. It can be purchased at the Web site www.thetransporters.com.
Soon after the videos appeared in the UK, some parents began saying that their autistic children were commenting more on the emotions they saw in the episodes and in real life, but the Baron-Cohen team wanted more solid evidence than that.
So it conducted a study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, in which a group of children with autism and a typically developing group of children were rated four weeks apart on their ability to recognize emotions in faces.
The children with autism watched "The Transporters" for 20 minutes a day in between the two tests, and by the time of the second test, they had "achieved equivalent levels to the typically developing controls" in emotion recognition, Baron-Cohen said.
That resonates with Jessica Greenstein, a mother of two boys in upstate New York whose older son, 5-year-old Benjamin, has been diagnosed on the autism spectrum and has been a fan of "The Transporters" since he started watching it on the Web several months ago.
Even though there was only one free episode available on the Internet in the British version, Benjamin would ask to watch it over and over again, she said.
When she found out an American version would be issued, she suggested that her mother-in-law get it as a Hanukkah gift, and Benjamin has been absorbed by it ever since.
It has made him more aware of emotions, she said. "When he's watching it, he'll say 'Jennie's sad.' Or I might say 'How is Nigel feeling?' and he'll tell me."
She has also been trying to build on the DVDs' lessons in her home. So when she loses her temper, she said, "He'll say, Mommy's upset,' and I'll say, 'Mommy's not upset; Mommy's angry.' "
Mark Roth can be reached at mroth(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
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