iAutism

We have to admit it: we were especially intrigued with Look in My Eyes and Eye Contact, two apps developed by FizzBrain. How could they help children look people in the eyes? Perhaps these apps could take pictures with the two cameras of the iPhone or iPod touch (the newest model, previous ones do not have camera) and analyze the orientation of the eyes and the position of the people on the other side? It sounded a bit like science fiction, although this is not impossible at all, especially if we remember that the latest photo cameras have smile detection systems.

Well, both applications use a less futuristic, but much more clever and certainly more reliable and effective mechanism to help children with ASD develop the habit of looking people in the eyes.

Play and watch
Let’s start with Look in My Eyes. Actually, it seems to us more a game than a learning application. The Play mode shows faces (usually children) and, for a couple of seconds, a number between 1 and 9 in each eye of the person shown in the photo.

Then, a keypad appears and the player must select a number. If successful, the player wins two dollars, which are accumulated in an account. This way, players aremotivated every time they see a new face to look at the eyes quickly to remember the number before it disappears so they can earn more money.

At any time, you can access the warehouse, where you can spend the money buying furniture, utensils, food and even customers of a restaurant (there are 44 different items to buy), which then can be placed in a virtual restaurant consisting of several rooms (patio, dining, kitchen, cellar and secret room).

You can buy multiple copies of the same object (eg a hamburger), which you can rotate and resize and move between rooms, so you can spend a lot of time with the game, practicing both the visual exercise and the proper placement of items in each part of the restaurant.

Options
Look in My Eyes gives the player or his/her parent or therapist the option of accessing a summary screen that shows the number of exercises done and the number and percentage of correct ones. You can reset these counters by starting a new game.

Also, supporting the idea that the player takes pictures of how the restaurant has been decorated, another option allows you to access the Saved Photos folder of the Photo app of the iPad/iPhone/iPod. (For those who do not know, whatever the app you’re using with Apple devices, simply by pressing the power button and the main front button simultaneously you will take a photo of what appears on the screen which will be saved in that folder).

Eye Contact
FizzBrain sells five different editions of Look in My Eyes: Restaurant, Dinosaur, Undersea, Car Mechanic and Steam Train, all operating in an equivalent way but with scenes and items to buy based on different ambiences.

The same company also sells two versions (Toybox and Zoo) of Eye Contact. This app operates in basically the same way, but each time you select the right number what you get is a star. In the bottom part of the screen you can see the stars earned and pending. When you earn the fourth star, a new toy (or a new animal) appears and you can place it in a room or inside a toybox.

Compared to Look in My Eyes, the scenes and acquisition mechanism are simpler, but the token economy system can be more intuitive and appropriate for certain children.

On the other hand, it is also possible to buy one of the four editions of Scene Builder (the same ones as with Look in My Eyes). This app allows you to purchase items and place them properly in different parts of the scene, but there is no visual exercise to practice.

Rating
Both Look in My Eyes and Eye Contact are simple applications, available only for the iPhone/iPod touch, and they implement a simple task but with a very motivating mechanism. But we miss some audio or musical reinforcements. Scene Builder is a much simpler app and in fact we do not think you can consider it a specific application for people with ASD.

All applications are in English only, but we see no major problems for use by other language speakers. However, to be able to use Look in My Eyes and Eye Contact, it is necessary that the child knows the numbers 1 through 9. I am always reluctant to give an opinion about the real effectiveness of an app in terms of therapy support (improving eye contact in this case), but with our ABA experience we feel that these apps can help a bit at least, and in any case they are exercise-based games with a lot of fun and prizes.

-Francesc Sistach & Susana Vila

This post is also available in: Spanish