Efeitos do uso de histórias infantis sobre o reconhecimento de expressões faciais de emoções em crianças com autismo.

Abstract

Between the deficits in communication and social interaction often observed in individuals with autism, highlights the difficulty in recognizing facial expressions of emotion. This is one of the most important skills for social interactions are effective, studies have sought to develop teaching procedures of this competence. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the use of children's stories, in training for the recognition of facial expressions of emotion in children with autism. The study included six children diagnosed with autism, at mild to moderate with age between 6 to 7 years. The procedure consisted of five phases: Pre-Testing, Training, Post-Test, Test of generalization and Follow-Up. It was used in the pre and post-test 40 stimuli composed of drawings and photographs of faces (of different ages and races) with four different facial expressions - happiness, sadness, anger and fear. The pre-test and post-test consisted of 10 attempts. In each trial were presented four different stimuli with the four expressions and it was required that the participant pointed to figure with the words requested. In training were used 20 stories, five on each one of the expressions. The stories were submitted and, after, was asked to participant pointing the figure corresponding to words highlighted in history. The test of generalization was composed of video presentation of four stories (one of each facial expression). After watching the video was requested to participant pointing to the figure corresponding to words highlighted in the video. The Follow-up consisted in the production of the test of generalization, four weeks after the application of the first test. The criterion of change of Pré-Teste to the training was 70% of errors and the training for the post - Test to test the generalization was 90%. The results showed that all participants did not identify facial expressions of emotion in the pre-test, but began to recognize them after training and showed widespread performance of recognition of emotions in the test of Generalization. I Follow - up only participants P1, P2, P3, and P6 maintained the test performance of generalization. These results indicate that the use of children's stories is a feature of play - effective teaching to teach the recognition of facial expressions of emotion to children with autism.