Face Thief

Education of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is absolutely necessary to reduce deficits in social interaction and communication skills. We present Face Thief, a software proto-type designed to teach emotion recognition to children with ASD. The system brings a new therapeutic resource that offers the child the opportunity of learning social interaction basics while playing. Face Thief is developed with Adobe Flash CS5 and uses a vector-based graphic design tool to create 2D contents. As a result we deployed a point-and-click game that appeals to the construction of emotional expressions through the selection of appropriate eyes/eyebrows and mouth configurations. Now, children can practice emotion identification during therapy sessions but also in other settings, whenever they want and without time constraints.