Emotismo: um aplicativo para auxiliar crianças no espectro autista a reconhecer e reproduzir emoções

Abstract

Emotismo is a mobile application, for the Android platform, which aims to assist children within the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the recognition and proper use of facial expressions to represent the primary emotions. It has three main activities: (i) presentation of emotions from socio-emotional contexts associated with photos; (ii) imitation of facial expressions to represent one of the emotions, followed by analysis via facial recognition; (ii) identification of emotion given the presence of a socio-emotional context. Emotismo allows caregivers (parents, therapists, educators, etc.) of children with autism to personalize the socio-emotional contexts to be worked on, according to the particularities of each child. Also, it allows viewing the time of use and performance for the activities performed by the child. Its development was preceded by an analysis of similar solutions and considered specific recommendations for the development of digital resources for individuals with autism and/or cognitive and learning disabilities. It is hoped that the free availability of Emotismo can contribute so that the socio-emotional interactions of people with autism can improve.