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Who can benefit from using the Emotion Trainer?
The Emotion Trainer was initially developed to meet the needs of able children with Autism or Asperger's Syndrome, but it is currently being evaluated for a much wider audience, including adults with Autistic Spectrum disorders, people with learning difficulties, and people with head injuries or schizophrenia who have trouble reading emotions in others. Due to feedback about the original version of the program we have updated it in ways we hope will allow it to be used more widely. This includes use of American or British spellings, questions relevant to child or adult users, and greater choice about how many and which types of questions are presented, and the animations used as rewards.
Who might benefit
The Emotion Trainer is designed to teach anyone who struggles to recognise and understand emotions, whatever their age or diagnosis.
There is some reading required, so the current version is only suitable for people with fairly good reading and verbal understanding skills (we think that it is suitable for people who read at levels typical of a 7-year old or greater). However the new version does contain greater amounts of speech samples to minimise this. Due to the computer-based format it is also necessary to have sufficient vision, motor skills and familiarity with computers to see the screen and operate the mouse, although it would be possible for another person to assist.
The Emotion Trainer has been shown to have significant benefits when used by able children with autism or Asperger's syndrome. Further research will be evaluating whether it is equally effective with a wider age group, and also with other client groups, such as people with learning disabilities.
We would also like to hear your ideas about other people who may benefit from using the Emotion Trainer, or possible ways of adapting it to make it more widely available. We are open to requests to use the program in further research.
Contact feedback@emotiontrainer.co.uk
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