Emotional Arousal of Children with Autism to Pixar Videos

Internal and external emotion recognition is universal knowledge individuals begin to understand in early childhood. Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have physiological impairments that affect their social functioning, behavior, and emotion regulation. They often have difficulty revealing true emotions as opposed to mimicked emotions, which can make social connections challenging. In this pilot study, children with high-functioning and low-functioning ASD were observed in their therapy clinic, KidzSPOT Therapy, while watching a four-minute Pixar™ video as pre and post measures. The children were their own control from pre to post-evaluation. The animated characters and situations shown in the Pixar™ videos throughout the study exhibited two specific emotions: happy and sad. For six-weeks at home, children and their caregivers were asked to watch two, four-minute PixarTM videos a week on non-consecutive days and were recorded with cellular devices. Noldus FaceReader™ was used to analyze and determine increased emotional arousal of the children from recordings sent by their caregivers as they watched the videos at home. The Circumplex Model of Affect from the Noldus FaceReader™ analysis exposed the children’s active and inactive responses. The children sought support from their caregivers and therapists as a form of validation and situational understanding. The data did not display evidence of significant correlation between variables and emotional change over the course of the study. There were many limitations to this pilot study resulting in inadequate conclusions for a whole subpopulation. These findings were limited to sample size, participant interest and age-range availability within the clinic.