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In Production
The Transporters
The Transporters DVD aims to help children with autism to look at the human face and to learn about emotions. Stephen Fry is the narrator.
Link: www.transporters.tv
Helping children with autism to recognise emotions through a series of 15 five-minute animations
- 20,000 people requested a copy of The Transporters DVD in the first four weeks following launch
- In tests conducted by Cambridge University, children with high-functioning autism caught up with typically developing children of the same age in their performance on emotion recognition tasks following a four-week period of watching the DVD for 15 minutes a day
- "We have noticed a change in his behaviour, speech and range of emotional expressions since he started watching The Transporters. It’s a bit like someone's flicked a switch in his head" – Parent talking about her child
Behind the fun and colourful world of The Transporters lies some of the latest Cambridge research. The Autism Research Centre (ARC) has been working with Culture Online and Catalyst Pictures to find new ways to help children with autism learn about emotions.
Children with autism tend to avoid looking at human faces and find it hard to understand why facial features move in the way that they do. This inability to read emotions on the human face impairs their ability to communicate with other people.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen comments: "Just as a child with dyslexia can be helped significantly by using tailored educational methods to ease them into reading words, so a child with autism can be helped significantly by using tailored educational methods to ease them into reading faces."
The 15 key emotions portrayed in The Transporters aimed at 2 to 8-year-olds are: happy, sad, angry, afraid, excited, disgusted, surprised, tired, unfriendly, kind, sorry, proud, jealous, joking and ashamed. Each episode has an associated interactive quiz to help the child learn about the featured emotion.
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The Transporters on track
Jamie playing with The Transporters
Barney's special day
More Transporters in the engine shed