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(More customer reviews)My son has Aspergers syndrome. He did this program a few years ago when he was 6 or 7 years old.
I was just looking this program up today and saw that it has had only one review here and it was so lowly rated. I feel I need to say something to at least balance the view.
The program is substantial and is of quite decent quality. I really don't agree that it's poor actors doing poor acting. I think, for the most part, the acting was very good.
Does it teach autistic children to read emotions? That's a harder question. Can a software ever teach kids on the autism spectrum emotions?
I think what the software taught me was that my son was actually A LOT more capable of looking at a face and detect emotions, at least in a relatively non-dynamic situation, such watching a video clip of people. He surprised me by correctly identifying many more "advanced" emotions, such as jealousy, hesitation, dismay, etc.
I think where the software went wrong, or really, went too ambitious, is that it eventually (at higher levels) involved too many emotions, many of them very subtle, and increasingly subjective depending on your personal judgment. That's just too much for its targeted audience. You also realize how hard it is to "teach" higher level emotions.
The software also included many voice clips that will teach kids to gauge emotions by the tone of voice. That's another nice surprise I had. My son was very good at detecting the emotions in the voices, more than he could by facial/body clues.
So at least this software showed that many of our ASD children don't have a hardware deficit that disables them from learning about emotions. We may have to look deeper to see why them don't learn in real life.
I think the software made my son at least more aware of all the emotions going on with people. Is he a capable face reader now? No. He would still ask me, "mom why are you so mad?" when I'm simply tired.
My son enjoyed the software. I did too. It is quite expensive so if you do want it, it would be much better to share it with some other parents. As once your are done with it, you probably won't use it again.
I honestly think quality-wise it's a solid program. Evidently a lot of people have put a lot of efforts into making it.
I know there are more people who are trying to design new software that would increase social skills of ASD children. To get it to be really effective will be a huge challenge. But you never know.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Mind Reading: The Interactice Guide to Emotions, Version 1.3 with Game Zone, Learning Center, and Library
"Mind Reading" is a unique reference work covering the entire spectrum of human emotions. It is available as a DVD-ROM and also as a set of CD-ROMs running on either a Windows or an Apple Macintosh computer. Using the software you can explore over 400 emotions, seeing and hearing each one performed by six different people. There are three main sections: Emotions Library, Learning Centre and Games Zone. "Mind Reading" is for everyone interested in emotions. It has been designed with awareness of the needs of children and adults who may want to improve their ability to recognize emotions in others. It is also an invaluable resource for parents, teachers, those involved in social skills training and people working in the dramatic arts. Emotions Library: Here you can study 412 different emotions organized into 24 groups. Six video clips are provided for each emotion showing close-up performances by a wide range of people (old, young, male, female). Six audio clips express the intonation of each emotion. There are definitions and stories for each emotion, a search facility, and a scrapbook where you can create and organize your own collections. Learning Center: Learn to improve your emotion recognition skills in this section. Valuable to a wide set of users of all ages, including people on the autistic spectrum. A variety of lessons and quizzes are provided to present emotions in a systematic way and then to test recognition. The difficulty of some lessons can be adjusted to suit a wide range of ability levels. A rich set of collectible rewards is provided to help motivate users. Games Zone: If you want to have fun with emotions then play one of the games in this section. See how world famous actor Daniel Radcliffe reacts to being offered some raw squid! Visit a school, an office or a market to play with emotions in the real world. Play a fast moving card game where you have to match the faces to win or guess the emotion in the hidden face. The Games Zone encourages informal learning about emotions in a less structured setting.
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