The Transporters DVD series is designed for children aged 4 to 8 with ASC (autistic spectrum condition). It uses animated vehicles with real human faces to help children transfer learning to real life.
Professor Simon Baron Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, and a team of researchers compared children with ASC who watched the DVD for 15 minutes every weekday for one month with children with ASC who didn’t watch the DVD. They were also compared to typically developing children who did not watch the DVD.
The results were very exciting:
- In all tasks on which the children were tested, most caught up their typically developing peers.
- The results suggest that The Transporters DVD is an effective way to teach emotion recognition to children with ASC and that the learning generalises to new faces and new situations.
- Children with ASC who did not watch the DVD remained below typically developing levels.
The DVD sells for USD 57.50 or £29.33 at The Transporters website and the pack includes interactive quizzes and a guide book for parents and teachers. 25% of the profits go to autism charities and research.
Chapter: Autism :: 21 January 2009
