Snapje – a concept to practice emotion recognition in relation to the context for children with autism
Posted by Marco van Hout on January 8th, 2010
Journals and newspapers have been full of it lately; There are more children with a diagnosis in the spectrum of autism nowadays. Recent expectations are that one out of a hundred children have a form of autism. A reason for this is that the social side of life becomes more important. At primary school children already have to work in groups from a young age. This is difficult for children with autism.
To enable children to get skills in emotion recognition in relation to the context, Snapje has been developed. Snapje is an iPhone application concept (prototype stage). A parent can make photo’s with his iPhone of situations,that contain an emotional meaning. Photos can be made of familiar people, but also from the child itself. On the one hand it will be very useful to learn others emotions in relation to the context. On the other hand, it is useful as well to learn the relation between the context and an emotion through own experience of the emotion. Both positive and negative emotions can be addressed.
At a later moment, parent and child can play a game together with the photos that have been shot. This enables parent and child to discuss these situations at a relaxed moment that suites them. This makes it possible to discuss also negative emotions of the child, once the child is in a positive, calmer state of mind.
The children can play games on themselves with the photos and emotions as well, since they like repetition. To make the child familiar with the emotions, he or she can also play games in which they a PrEmo cartoon has to be matched with the word of the emotion it expresses. To make the product grow with the capabilities of the child, five different levels have been created, featuring a different amount of emotions.
Snapje is the result of a combined research project for SusaGroup and Delft University of Technology (ID-Studiolab). It has been developed by Pascalle Karthaus and SusaGroup.
If you like to learn more about the Snapje concept, please contact SusaGroup to receive a descriptive pdf.
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