Developed by world-famous ASD expert Simon Baron-Cohen!
The Mind Reading CD-ROM will help children and adults improve their ability to recognize emotions in others. Through games and lessons, you can explore over 400 emotions, seeing and hearing each one performed by six different people. Video clips feature a wide range of people and audio clips express the intonation.
There are three main sections in Mind Reading. Students can take quizzes in the "Learning Center," study faces and expressions in the "Emotion Library," and playfully test their knowledge in the "Game Center."
Compatible with Windows and Mac
Requires 2GB free on your hard drive, and Windows 98 or later (OS 9.2 or later for Mac users).
Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is Director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) in Cambridge. He holds degrees in Human Sciences from New College, Oxford, a PhD in Psychology from UCL, and an M.Phil in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry. He held lectureships in both of these departments in London before moving to Cambridge in 1994. He is also Director of CLASS (Cambridge Lifespan Asperger Syndrome Service), a clinic for adults with suspected AS.
He is author of Mindblindness (MIT Press, 1995), The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (Penguin UK/Basic Books, 2003), and Prenatal Testosterone in Mind (MIT Press, 2005). He has edited a number of scholarly anthologies, including Understanding Other Minds (OUP, 1993, 2001), The Maladapted Mind (Erlbaum, 1997) and Synaesthesia (Blackwells, 1997).
He has also written books for parents and teachers such as Autism: The Facts (OUP, 1993), Tourette Syndrome: The Facts (OUP, 1998), and Teaching children with autism to mind read (Wiley, 1998). He is author of the CD-ROM Mind Reading: an interactive guide to emotions (Jessica Kingsley Ltd, 2003) that was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Off-Line Learning.
He has been awarded prizes from the American Psychological Association, the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA), and the British Psychological Society (BPS) for his research into autism. For 2007 he is President of the Psychology Section of the BA, Vice President of the National Autistic Society, and received the 2006 Presidents' Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge from the BPS. His current research is testing the 'extreme male brain' theory of autism at the neural, endocrine and genetic levels.
"I am delighted that my acting might actually help people with autism learn to recognize how other people feel. It is wonderful that drama and special education can be combined in this exciting new software."
Actor Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame, and featured actor in the Mind Reading software
Learning Center
Valuable to a wide set of users of all ages, this section provides a variety of lessons and quizzes that present emotions in a systematic way and then test recognition. Some of the lessons can be adjusted to suit a wide range of ability levels. A set of rewards is provided to help motivate users.
Emotions Library
Here you can study 412 different emotions organized into 24 groups. Six video clips are provided for each emotion showing close-up performances by a wide range of people (old, young, male, female). Six audio clips express the intonation of each emotion. There are definitions and stories for each emotion, a search facility, and a scrapbook where you can create and organize your own collections.
Games Zone
If you want to have fun with emotions, then play one of the games in this section. See how world famous actor Daniel Radcliffe reacts to being offered some raw squid! Visit a school, an office, or a market to play with emotions in the real world. Play a fast-moving card game where you have to match the faces to win, or guess the emotion in the hidden face. The Games Zone encourages informal learning about emotions in a less structured setting.
