A Case Study Of Facial Expression Imitation Training Based On Mirror Feedback For Children With Autism

Facial expression is a form of non-verbal communication that conveys emotional information.In early childhood,children learn how to use facial expressions to express emotions by imitating other people’s facial expressions in different situations.It can be seen that the ability to imitate facial expressions plays an important role in children’s social cognitive development.In the empirical research on the imitation ability of children with autism,many studies have found that children with autism have deficits in facial expression imitation,which affects their emotional communication in daily life.At present,the research on facial expression imitation at home and abroad is increasing,but there are still few research results on facial expression imitation training for children with autism,and there is a lack of corresponding practical experience.According to the relevant literature,providing visual support with mirror feedback to children with autism can effectively promote the development of their imitation ability.Therefore,this study is based on the key cognitive process of facial expression imitation,namely noticing expressions,remembering expressions,reproducing expressions and giving feedback to implement one-to-one mirror feedback-based facial expression imitation training on two children with autism.By examining the changes of children’s expression imitation ability before and after training,to verify the effectiveness of expression imitation training based on mirror feedback.This study used the A-B-A’ type design of the single subject research.In this study,the facial expression imitation ability of two autistic children during the baseline period,the intervention period and the maintenance period were evaluated by the self-made autistic children’s facial expression imitation ability test table,and the score of each facial expression imitation ability test is 1 data point.During the intervention period,based on the key cognitive process of facial expression imitation,this study formulated an facial expression imitation training program suitable for two children with autism,and conducted 24 training sessions for subject A,30 training sessions for subject B.The duration of each facial expression imitation training is about 40 minutes.During the whole study period,a total of 32 data points were collected for subject A and 36 data points for subject B,and visual analysis and C statistics were used to analyze the collected data to test the facial expression imitation training based on mirror feedback effect.In addition,this study conducted interviews with teachers and parents of the children with autism before and after the training,aiming to evaluate the social validity of facial expression imitation training.The conclusions of this study show that:（1）The facial expression imitation training based on mirror feedback has good immediate effect and maintenance effect on improving the facial expression imitation ability of the subjects,and the subjects’ imitation ability of happy facial expression and imitation ability of angry facial expression were positively developed;（2）The facial expression imitation training based on mirror feedback has high social validity.This study suggests that facial expression imitation training for children with autism can be based on the key cognitive process of expression imitation,using mirrors to provide them with a visual support.In addition,training should combine relevant emotional situations and appropriate training strategies to promote the development of facial expression imitation ability in children with autism.