Attention Modification to Attenuate Facial Emotion Recognition Deficits in Children with Autism: A Pilot Study

Wieckowski et al. (2020) tested a short computer program on autistic children. The screen showed short videos of real faces showing happy, sad, angry, or scared expressions. While the clip played, bright boxes blinked around the eyes or mouth to pull the child’s gaze to key features. Each child sat through ten short sessions. The team then checked if the kids could name emotions any better than before.

Parents also filled out a quick form about day-to-day social trouble.

On lab tests the children scored the same before and after. They still missed many emotions when tested with new faces. Parents, however, saw small day-to-day gains. They rated social problems a bit lower after the ten sessions. The program was fun and easy to run at home, but it did not teach new emotion skills that showed up on objective tests.

Lee et al. (2024) helps explain why the training fell flat. Their EEG study showed that autistic children’s brains react poorly only to real faces, not cartoons. Wieckowski used real faces, so the kids’ weak inhibitory circuits may have blocked learning despite the blinking cues.

Goulardins et al. (2013) and Shic et al. (2023) add another clue: autistic youngsters already look less at faces and show weaker gaze-brain links. Simply steering the eyes with bright boxes may not be enough if the underlying neural response is muted.

Libero et al. (2016) offers hope. They tracked autistic youth for 18 weeks with no special training and saw emotion recognition slowly improve. Natural development happens, but the brief attention cueing in Wieckowski’s ten sessions was too short to speed that process up.

If you run social-skills groups, this pilot warns that eye-grabbing highlights alone are unlikely to teach emotion naming. Combine gaze training with richer strategies: direct teaching of feature-emotion rules, live practice with feedback, and longer time spans. Also, keep using real faces; cartoons miss the inhibitory hurdles shown by Kyung et al. Finally, track both test scores and parent reports—objective measures may lag behind real-world social comfort.