Can a DVD Teach Emotions?

The Transporters is the name of a DVD created to teach kids on the spectrum how to understand emotions. Autism Research Centre director Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues developed the DVD with every detail "meant to cater to the autistic mind and teach kids how to understand other people’s emotions," as yesterday's Discover Magazine says. Baron-Cohen's theories are behind the creation of the DVD and in particular his theory about systematizing being connected to the male brain, and empathizing to the female brain.

Each episode of the DVD is meant to present a certain emotion. The characters are trains and other vehicles, with the faces of actual humans superimposed on them. Notes Discover Magazine about Baron-Cohen's theories:

All human brains have a need to understand how systems works, a need that is set at different levels for different people. An autistic person, who appears lost in his or her own world, has a brain set to hypersystemizing. As such, children with autism love trains and other single-direction, systematic vehicles and tend to watch them carefully, both in reality and on TV.
Every detail in The Transporters is meant to cater to the autistic mind and teach kids how to understand other people’s emotions. Casting was based on an actor’s ability to produce clear emotional expressions, and a panel of 20 judges, mostly psychologists, was used to evaluate whether each face that appears in the episodes in fact represents the emotion to which it is matched. The eight characters—all vehicles that move slowly and follow predictable, one-way tracks—are animated, but each has a real human face superimposed on it so that any emotions expressed will be “real.” The characters interact with each other in four simple, predictable locations: a junction, a harbor, an observatory, and a quarry. “Past studies show that children with autism like mechanical objects and predictability,” Baron-Cohen says. “Here, we merged the two, keeping everything mechanical and linear—back and forth is the only possible movement, and the only characters are machines.”

Discover Magazine notes that the DVD was released just over two years ago in the UK and has received an "enthusiastic response"; the DVD was just released in January of 2009 in the US.

And yes, I've seen it: I've got a copy right here by my computer. The report from my reviewer?

Phlegmatic, as in, Charlie watched several minutes and then was up and gone. What I'm offering here is not a proper, and certainly not an objective, review of The Transporters, but a record of what happened in our household after I put the DVD into my computer.

I should also qualify this report by noting that Charlie seems to in a minority or subset of individuals on the spectrum in that he has a bit of a "take it or leave it" attitude towards the computer and all things mechanical and technological. He has been extremely into his iPod of late; Charlie's often been drawn to music, and the computer programs and videos and movies that have tended to get his attention are long on the music and short on the story and words end of thing.

Further, Charlie was never very interested in Thomas the Tank Train, which The Transporters is clearly modeled on. Charlie did have a train set when he was younger and he was very interested in laying out or (better yet) watching us crawl on the floor and lay out the track. He liked to line up the trains in a (as in, one particular) certain configuration and carefully push all the little trains and locomotives on the track and woe to all when (as they tended to---Charlie's fine motor skills are not what they are now) the trains fell over into a jumble.

When I turned on The Transporters, Charlie blinked and looked out the corners of his eyes at it. The backgrounds and trains are computer-generated and, while the faces of the actors on the trains are certainly expressive, the storylines are carefully put together, with the intent of teaching "happy" or "afraid" or "joking," etc.. The DVD is clearly well-thought-out and its elements carefully orchestrated, and controlled.

And perhaps it's precisely that lack of messiness, of randomness amid all the systematization that made The Transporters not a hit in our household (keeping in mind that my son watches very few movies and videos---he's just not very interested). What are emotions but about that messy, unbounded, often uncontrollable part of our all too human selves? It does make sense to teach these messy entities in a neatly structure setting, but there's a reason that we look to art and music and other creative forms to express and communicate emotions. The exacting scenarios and scripts of The Transporters end up, perhaps, undermining its state goal, of teaching children on the to understand emotions which can carry us away when we are least attuned to them.

I'm not saying I've a better sense of how to teach about emotions. My own son is very emotional and both senses our emotions and communicates his own in ways other than with words and language. Charlie's completely sensitive to the tone, pitch, volume, and melody of speech and to what is expressed in all that; the snatches of songs that he sings and hums often convey what and how he is feeling. Indeed, one reason The Transporters was less effective for Charlie is that the DVD relies so very much on the visual----on the expressions on the actors' faces-on-the-vehicles---to convey emotions, without recourse to body language and gesture.

So yes, we weren't transported by The Transporters. Onthe other hand----considering how the DVD relies so much on faces to instruct about emotions has gotten me to think about what it does indeed take to teach and tell about feelings---maybe something that's not readily burned onto a DVD.

And, while we're on the topic, one more thing about trains and emotions: Charlie loves to ride trains----the real ones.