DVD teaches autistic children the meaning of a smile

It wasn’t until Jude met Jenny that the 3-year-old autistic boy understood what happy people look like.

Jenny, a green trolley car with a human face, had a furrowed brow when her wheel buckled and she got stuck on a track. But after being rescued by friends, she smiled broadly – and that’s when something clicked for little Jude Baines.

“It was revelatory,” his mother, Caron Freeborn told AP Television News in Cambridge, England. Before watching the video, Jude didn’t understand what emotions were and never noticed the expressions on people’s faces, even those of his parents or younger brother.

Jenny’s adventures are part of a DVD for autistic children released this week in the United States called The Transporters.

The DVD teaches autistic children how to recognize emotions like happiness, anger and sadness through the exploits of vehicles including a train, a ferry, and a cable car.

It is the brainchild of Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University. He also happens to be a cousin of Sacha Baron-Cohen, the comedian behind the characters Ali G, the aspiring rapper, and Borat, the crass Kazakh reporter.