How Do You Feel Now? Emotional States: Technology gives autistic kids a hand.

Byline: Temma Ehrenfeld

To most people, the human face is a compelling object fraught with meaning. But for autistic children, who can't get a read on other people's emotions, eye contact is terrifying. When they do look at faces, they tend to stare at the mouth. Fortunately, researchers now think that technology can help overcome the barrier that isolates these kids. Software that enables robots to respond to a child's feelings a little bit--but not too much--can help train him or her to interact more freely with people. "The beauty of a robot or software is that it's not human," and therefore not as intimidating, says Stephen Porges, an autism expert at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Computer-generated faces are already having an impact in the classroom. Psychologist Dominic Massaro at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has created Baldi, a lively computer character, as a stand-in for human teachers. For three years, Baldi and his female counterpart, Baldette, have been giving autistic kids in the Bay School in Santa Cruz lessons in vocabulary and in understanding facial expressions. The character has been so successful that he's spawned imitators--Baldini in Italian, Baldir in Arabic and Bao in Chinese.

Porges thinks that the real role of cartoon personas is not so much to teach patients as to calm them. Autistic kids live in a state of hyperalertness, as if they were constantly suffering stage fright. If technology can put them at ease, Porges argues, social skills will develop naturally. In a recent study, Porges exposed 20 autistic people, ranging from 10 to 21 years old, to engineered speech and music. He removed low frequency sounds, which the body tends to interpret as indicating danger, and exaggerated vocal intonations, much as people dramatize emotions when speaking to infants. After 45 minutes, all but one of the subjects began looking at the eyes of a person on a video screen just as a normal viewer would. The improvement persisted at least a week, but had faded after six months. Porges is now developing headphones that reduce low frequencies. He also hopes to test whether ongoing exposure to the engineered sounds can lead to long-term ...