Device Developed To Help Socially Challenged

An anonymous reader writes "A device from MIT Media Labs that can pick up on people's emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed." From the article: "The 'emotional social intelligence prosthetic' device, which El Kaliouby is constructing along with MIT colleagues Rosalind Picard and Alea Teeters, consists of a camera small enough to be pinned to the side of a pair of glasses, connected to a hand-held computer running image recognition software plus software that can read the emotions these images show. If the wearer seems to be failing to engage his or her listener, the software makes the hand-held computer vibrate."

Comments

So Simple?

[JDSalinger]

According to TFA, autistic people cannot discern or interpret a bored look on someone's face, but can realize that feeling a vibration in their hand means that someone is bored. Using a camera (to detect boredom) means that the autistic person is looking at the person he is speaking to. It's interesting that a human could receive image data and be unable to remember what it means, but receive touch data and be able to remember its meaning. If this interaction is correct, then a big high five to the geniuses that found the vibration communication channel into autistic minds. Of course if this is not the case, how will a vibrator help? This sounds like an unlikely solution to me, but I have not studied autism. Perhaps, the importance of this study is not that it will actually help autistic people, but that our face recognition capabilities are getting to the point of being useable in today's society. -C

Re:So Simple?

[hackwrench]

I have Asperger's, similar to Autism. Show me a picture of a bored person. Tell me the person is bored. If you were to ask me what features would indicate to me that person is bord, I'd be hard press to tell you
Take the picture away. Show me videos of people and then ask me:
1. Which of those people have elements that are similar to the bored person.
I'd be hard pressed to answer that as well.

Re:So Simple?

[Billosaur]

You misunderstand autism. This has nothing to do with memory. Autistic people do not have the facial expression recognition algorithms that most humans have. So someone has implemented such an algorithm on a computer, and then the computer tells the autistic person what the expression means.

I worked with the autistic population for about 7 years. I think it has not been established that autistic people lack facial expression recognition algorithms. From what I've seen, they cannot interpret what they see, lacking the ability to integrate facial expressions of others with their own feelings, and use that to create a picture of what someone else is feeling. The autistic individual tends to treat everything as an object, and they can recognize form and substance, but not emotionality. However, they can learn it, given enough conditioning and reinforcement, albeit it is very artificial and prone to error if certain situations occur which were not anticipated. This device may work as an excellent training tool for those who can use it properly, but it won't solve the problem in the long run.

Re:So Simple?

[gEvil (beta)]

*yawn*

Re:So Simple?

[gurutc]

I also have Aspergers, and one of the most painful things about it is that people can't believe it's possible to miss simple and seemingly impossibly obvious clues.

It's sad that folks don't know enough, yet still comment, to believe that something this simple would be a huge help.

I want one.

Re:So Simple?

[Autistic]

I agree, but I think there is a little more to it.

I certainly do not see as much from peoples faces as other people can. But I can see a little. I can see stronger emotions than boredom.

But the other side is knowing that some type of response is necessary and what that response should be. I may see that someone is angry or is sad, but I don't necessarily know what to do about it. I don't know whether to try to approach and help or stand back and wait. Often times, the hesitation of response is seen as lack of understanding.

So I get accused of not detecting emotion a lot more than is the case. I can see it, but I don't necessarily respond to it in a way that would be expected. I'll do the wrong thing, or if I know that has failed too many times before, I'll do nothing at all.

Re:So Simple?

[gstoddart]

I'll take a stab at this ...

For girls you are seeing across the room: She plays with her hair, licks her lips, smiles at you, will make eye contact with you.

Can you accurately identify when she is looking at you or someone else? Do you think all such such signals are as overt as licking the lips? The signals can be a lot more muted and ambiguous, so it can be in a gray area where you can miss something subtle -- or hope to see something which isn't there. If she is NOT currently looking at you is that a summary rejection since all interested people are looking? Nor everyone is likely to have contact initiated based on their looks; you as like as not could go completely unnoticed.

For girls you are interacting with: You squeeze her hand and she squeezes back, you ask her a question and she asks you the question back, you touch her arm and she doesn't flinch or move away, she compliments you on anything, you look like you are going to go somewhere and she asks if she can come, she laughs at your jokes, you walk away and she is waiting for you when you return, she is the one to initiate conversation with you, etc.

But, you've put the cart before the horse. If you're already at the hand-squeezing stage, you're probably in posession of a few non-ambiguous signals. You also wouldn't use body contact to define some of the earlier stages of human interaction -- it could be completely inappropriate, and you'll seem a bigger dork. Have you tacitly been granted permission to be that close? Or are you just a bungling goon who wants to know if you touch her, she'll flinch?

I can be socially awkward. I find it difficult to engage in social contact with new people. I can't imagine someone with a 'real' disorder being given nice codified things like you've done and be expected to apply them. Because they are, after all, subjective and hit-and-miss in terms of their predictive value.

Even with my own 'plain old' (*) social awkwardness/geekiness, I don't think I could apply some of your cues -- at least not in the grossly simplified way you put them. There is just too much ambiguity in interpreting the responses from people, and I can't often tell where in that range something might lie.

(*) I'm neither Autistic, nor do I have Asberger's -- but like most human behaviour, I believe it's on a continuum, and I might have some of those characteristics without actually having the affliction per se.

Socially Challenged?

[robyannetta]

"Socially challenged"? You mean WoW players?

Slashdot? Socially Challanged?

[Cr0w T. Trollbot]

For once, this really IS "news for nerds!"

- Crow T. Trollbot

Boredom detector

[PainBot]

Hopefully I can get one for my boss

My boss is socially challenged

[Timesprout]

So we have special key words we use so he knows when I am becoming bored or angry.

He will say something like

"We need to achieve synergy across our departmental endeavour so we can proactively engage any challenges the business may face"

I will then respond

"You are a fucking wanker"

sweet jesus, it's an emotional clippy!

[smellsofbikes]

"I see you are talking to someone who is trying to be friendly. What would you like to do now?
* gently brush the person off?
* actively engage the person
* seduce the person?"

Device Developed To Help Socially Challenged

[Peter Trepan]

Experts claim the "Microcomputer" will enable sufferers to hold down meaningful jobs while avoiding painful human interaction.

What?

[Monoliath]

I'd like to see some statistics on the accuracy of this device.

Sounds like a horrible idea, the subject matter is so incredibly subjective, and human emotions are so incredibly fickle, laced with an infinite and exponential number of variables that determine what anything 'means' from someone, to someone else.

Plus, does this help the autistic person learn more about people, or make them more dependent upon a machine?

In my mind, something like this only worsens autism because it prevents the individual from having to 'learn how to understand alien stimuli' by interpreting it for them.

I use to baby sit / care for one of my friends little brother, he was diagnosed with severe autism at an early age. Watching him grow older, in my eyes, he learned how to understand new things on his own (just sometimes it took a little longer than it does for most kids his age), like how the rest of us learn things (cause & effect / trial and error) it's not impossible for autistic individuals to perceive and comprehend this kind of stimuli, they just receive it on a different wavelength than we do, and in turn process it in a different manner.

A device like this isn't going to 'teach' anyone anything, it's simply a crutch that IMHO, will stifle development and learning.

As a side note, to me autism is a type of genius, that we just don't know how to comprehend as a society, this kid could do some of the most AMAZING things with number letter combinations / geometrical shapes I've ever seen.

There's a solution to that!

[StefanJ]

Make the device look like a little anthropomorphic cricket that sits on the user's shoulder. Program it to whisper helpful hints:

"From the way they're starting to nod off, I suspect you may have talked for a little too long about your D&D character. Maybe you should stop."

"I could be wrong, but this guy doesn't look very interested in how parking meters are a form of statist Piracy. Maybe you should stop talking and let him finish filling out that ticket."

"From the way she's wrinkling her nose, I suspect she thinks you smell like cat pee. Maybe you should politely back out now and think about taking a shower."

As one who has Asperger's,

[Odocoileus]

It might be nice to know when I am losing someone's interest, but, as an Aspie, I really don't have much to say to NT's anyway. I mean if I could hold conversations that interest a NT I wouldn't need the device in the first place. The reality, however, is that conversations that seem to intrigue NT's hold no interest for me. And for some reason I do not get, NT's do not like to talk about the same couple of topics incessantly. I have learned to do the obligatory greetings, but they are best kept short. Anything else is either about business, which has a finite set of interactions (I am fine within my knowledge base), or involves friends that have similar interests. I know some aspies want better communications with the NT world, but knowing when the person is bored would, at least for me, be worse because I still wouldn't know what words to speak to make it better. I guess in the long run maybe, after performing some statistical analysis concerning what words make a person bored. But then again, I pretty much already know that people do not want to talk about scifi or computers or world domination, so it is back to square one.