The Transporters

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen from the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University has been working on a cartoon series to help children recognize and understand emotions. He has put this together as a DVD, called The Transporters. According to the study he did based on this DVD, after 15 minutes a day for four weeks, most of the children with autism caught up with other children in their ability to recognize emotions. You can read about this research and about how to purchase this DVD at their site, www.thetransporters.com.
I was happy to have the opportunity to review this DVD. There are eight different cartoon trains and each one has a human face on the front. The faces show different emotions as they go through their adventures. I think that it would have been better if the mouths were actually moving when they were talking. At least, for my son it would have. I understand and can appreciate why they didn’t. The concentration is supposed to be on emotions and the goal is to have as much of the child’s focus on the facial expressions on the faces.
My daughter loved this DVD. My son didn’t. My son loves movies with animals in it. Garfield, Shark Tales, Happy Feet, are just a few of his favorites. I think that if you have a child that loves trains, then this DVD would go over big. It is so difficult to teach a lot of ASD children how to read emotions. I love seeing products that are specifically designed for this and made fun and entertaining. You can watch parts of the DVD with your child, and do activities based on it afterwards. As a teaching aid, this is perfect. I just wish my son was into watching trains, so that I could use it with my son.