Snapje - an iPhone app. concept to practise emotion recognition in relation to the context for children with autism
It has been all over journals and newspapers lately; There are more children with a diagnosis in the spectrum of autism nowadays. Recent expectations are that one out of a hundred children have a form of autism. A reason for this is that the social side of life becomes more important. At primary school children already have to work in groups from a young age. This is difficult for children with autism.
To enable children to get skills in emotion recognition in relation to the context, Snapje has been developed. Snapje is an application. A parent can take photo’s of situations that contain an emotional meaning. Photos can be made of familiar people, but also from the child itself. On the one hand it will be very useful to learn others emotions in relation to the context. On the other hand, it is useful as well to learn about the relation between the context and an emotion through own experience of the emotion. Both positive and negative emotions can be addressed.
At a later moment, parent and child can play a game together using the photos that have been taken. This enables parent and child to discuss these situations at a relaxed moment that suites them. This makes it possible to discuss also negative emotions of the child, once the child is in a positive, calmer state of mind.
The children can play games by themselves with the photos and emotions as well. To make the child familiar with the emotions, he or she can also play games in which a PrEmo cartoon has to be matched with the word of the emotion it expresses. To make the product grow with the capabilities of the child, five different levels have been created, featuring a different amount of emotions.
If you like to learn more about the Snapje concept, please visit our website dedicated to Snapje.
Snapje is the result of a combined research project for SusaGroup and Delft University of Technology (ID-Studiolab). It has been developed by Pascalle Karthaus and SusaGroup.