Effect of a serious game Jestimule in emotion recognition of Moroccan autistic children

Human beings can express their emotions through various ways, such as facial expressions, bodily expressions, prosody, or language. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a life-long neuro developmental disorder, characterized by varying levels of deficit in social and communication skills. A serious game called JeStimule has been developed to improve on the facial emotion recognition skills of children with autism. As many as 17 autistic children with distinctive characteristics were recruited for this cross-sectional study. The level of language comprehension and academic learning is slightly heterogeneous. The participants are predominantly boys, with an average age of 11.23. Our finding shows that children have gradual ease in recognizing the following emotions: Happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, pain and fear. However, they find it challenging to recognize the remaining three emotions, namely neutral, funny face, and disgust. JeStimule is an effective educational game for children with autism that could improve their skills in recognizing others’ emotion. However, further research needs to be carried out to test the game in the context of Moroccan children. Autism recognition of emotions is a cognitive remediation area of great interest to this population.