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Saturday, March 10, 2012

How Do We Recognize Faces?


Researchers, Jason M. Gold and Patrick J. Mundy, have found that people recognize an entire face no better than how they recognize each individual feature as it is shown alone. “Surprisingly, the whole was not greater than the sum of it's parts,” says Gold. These findings appear in the journal Psychological Science, which is published by the Association for Psychological Science. A summary of this article can be read in the March 9, 2012, ScienceDaily research news review.

Do2Learn released it's game FACELAND in 2009. FACELAND was designed and developed by Donna Stanger, a teacher for over 20 years and an educational software developer since 1979. Donna is responsible for over 100 award winning programs from Edmark and Sunburst including Muppet Slate and Imagination Express. Donna and the team at Do2Learn knew back before 2009 that those individuals with Autism struggle with recognizing facial expressions. 

Strategies teaching facial recognition led to FACELAND and here are some of the effective ways that this game works:
  • Breaks down the entire face into smaller concepts (clues).
  • Promotes clue acquisition via spaced repetition.
  • Combines clues for “part to whole” learning.
  • Checks for understanding of clues using new examples.

Our team included the ability to produce student progress reports and for extensive student tracking. This is a huge bonus for classroom teachers who need this kind of data for IEP reporting. The game uses real faces, not cartoon images. So, your student is learning exactly what they will be looking for in the expressions of others. FACELAND was awarded the Children's Technology Review's Editor's Choice Award in 2009.

How exciting to know that Do2Learn was ahead of this research in getting FACELAND out and available to our customers! If you don't have your students playing this yet, get FACELAND now.

Please take a look at Do2Learn's YouTube FACELAND Video!



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