Hindustan Times (Lucknow)

TOON THERAPY

Using kids’ favourite animated characters in autism therapy can prompt and reinforce many vital social skills and help connect with them better

- Benedict Carey

Therapists who specialise in autism often use a child’s own interests, toys or obsessions as a way to connect, and sometimes to reward effort and progress on social skills. The more eye contact a child makes, for example, the more play time he or she gets with those precious maps or stuffed animals. But now a group of scientists and the author of a new book are suggesting that those favourite activities could be harnessed better. If a child is fascinated with animated characters like Thomas the Tank Engine, why not use those characters to prompt and reinforce social developmen­t?

Millions of parents do this routinely, if not systematic­ally, flopping down on the floor with a socially distant child to playact the characters themselves.

“We individual­ise therapy to each child already, so if the child has an affinity for certain animated characters, it’s worth studying a therapy that incorporat­es them,” said Kevin Pelphrey, director of the child neuroscien­ce laboratory at Yale.

He and several other researcher­s, including John D E Gabrieli of M.I.T., Simon Barn-Cohen of the University of Cambridge and Pamela Ventola of Yale, are proposing a study to test the approach.

The idea came from Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter whose new book “Life, Animated” describes his family’s experience reaching their autistic son, Owen, through his fascinatio­n with Disney movies like “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It was Suskind’s story that first referred to ‘“affinity therapy.” He approached the researcher­s to put together a clinical trial based on the idea that some children can develop social and emotional instincts through the characters they love.

Experts familiar with his story say the theory behind the therapy is plausible, given what’s known from years of studying the effects of other approaches.

“The hypothesis they have put forward is sound, and absolutely worth studying,” said Sally J. Rogers, a professor of psychiatry at the MIND Institute of the University of California, Davis. “If you think about these animated characters, they’re strong visual stimuli; the emotions of the characters are exaggerate­d, those eyebrows and the big eyes, the music accompanyi­ng the expression­s. Watching those characters is the way many of us learned scripts that are appropriat­e in social situations.”

But Dr Rogers cautioned that using animated characters is hardly the key to reaching all autistic children. Many are fascinated by objects or topics without inherent social content — maps, for instance. But for those who fixate on movies, television shows or animated characters, affinity therapy makes sense, she said.

The researcher­s brought together by Suskind have written a proposal for a study of the approach. It calls for a 16-week trial for 68 children with autism, ages four to six. Half the children would receive affinity therapy, using the shows or movies they love as a framework to enhance social interactio­n, building crucial abilities like making eye contact and joint play. The other half, the control group, would engage in the same amount of interactio­n with a therapist but in free play, led by the child’s interest. Therapists have had some success using the latter approach. In autism therapy, progress is measured in increments and tends to be slow, especially in severely affected children, experts say.

Dr Pelphrey said that the affinity approach would incorporat­e many elements of pivotal response treatment, a type of therapy being intensely studied. It incorporat­es a system of rewards into normal interactio­ns between a therapist (or parent) and the child, playing together.

Sarah Calzone of Stratford, Conn., said her son, now 7 years old, showed improvemen­t in a pivotal response trial at Yale. “For instance, when the therapist was blowing bubbles with my son, she stopped and looked away. My son still wanted to see the bubbles, so he had to stop too, look in the same direction, then make eye contact and ask to continue.” Those two responses, making eye contact and recognisin­g another person’s point of view, developed quickly in the therapy. Her son, is now in regular classes at school.

Dr Pelphrey said that affinity therapy would deploy some of the same techniques, with the therapist playacting a favourite character and inhabiting the scenes with the child.

“Instead of watching Thomas the Tank Engine as a reward, for instance, we would have the child enter the social setting, with Thomas and Percy and the other characters, and learn through them,” he said. The scientists plan to submit their study proposal for funding. “It’s exciting,” said Suskind, now a senior fellow at Harvard, “having leading neuroscien­tists listen to me and say, ‘OK, what can we do to help?’ ”

 ??  ?? Cartoon characters such as Minnie Mouse (top) are useful in developing social skills in children with autism because of the strong visual stimuli that they offer
Cartoon characters such as Minnie Mouse (top) are useful in developing social skills in children with autism because of the strong visual stimuli that they offer

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from India