Today, I stumbled upon an interesting article that refers to research done at Emory University.  The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is part of an effort to learn more about the impact of cartoons and video games on the human brain.

“Humans experience emotional engagement with animated characters, empathizing with happiness, sadness or other emotions displayed by the characters”

To understand why humans relate to artificial characters in this way, they set out to determine if chimpanzees would respond empathetically to virtual characters. The researchers used contagious yawning to test empathetic response. “Yawns are contagious in the same way other emotional responses, like smiles, frowns and fear, are contagious,” said Matthew Campbell, the lead researcher.

The chimps yawned significantly more in response to 3D animations of yawning than they did to animated chimps making control mouth movements.

“Next, we want to study what aspects of animation make it more or less likely to be mimicked,” Campbell said. “One of the first things we’re going to look at is whether realism is important for the chimpanzees to empathize with what they’re seeing.”

The knowledge gained could help in the design of animation to promote imitation, such as therapies for children with autism, or to limit imitation, such as violent video games.

Today, SusaGroup launched a website that describes our Snapje concept, focusing on providing autistic children with a fun way to learn about recognizing, understanding and expressing emotions. You can find the website at www.emotiondiary.com.

Even though it may seem far fetched, I think the most important outcome of the study in relation to our instrument is that through embodiement (memory of the body helps to (re)experience the depicted emotion) and empathy with the character that depicts an emotion, it helps to recognize and ‘feel’ the emotion. I believe this is an important supportive argument for the approach we have used in the development of Snapje.

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