VOA常速英语:研究人员正试图使用谷歌眼镜帮助自闭症儿童打开心窗

Julian Brown has autism, one of the ways that manifests for him is that he has trouble reading people’s emotions but his Google Glasses have an app that helps him read basic emotional cues.“There is not a machine that can read your minds, but this helps with the emotions in recognizing them.”
朱利安·布朗患有自闭症。其表现之一便是：他很难分辨、识别他人的情绪，不过，他所戴的谷歌眼镜推出了一款应用，能帮助他解读人类的基本情绪。“没有哪种机器能读懂人的大脑，但它有助于识别人们的情绪。”

The app was designed by researchers at California Stanford University of Medicine.“The Autism Glass Program has meant to teach children with autism how to understand what a face is telling them, period.And we believe that when that happens, they would become more socially engaged and as a consequence of that,gain confidence in social settings.”
该应用程序是由加州斯坦福大学医学院的研究人员研发的。“我们实施了针对自闭症患者的谷歌眼镜项目，是为了教会自闭症儿童如何读懂别人的面部表情所向他们传递的信息，就是这样。我们相信，如果这真能实现的话，这些孩子会更多地参与到社会交往中去，因而也能够在更多的社交场合获得自信。”

The app simply reads facial expressions that autistic people often have a tough time recognizing:happy, sad, disgusted, surprised even mew.“We kind of had the idea of basically creating a behaviour or aid that would recognize the expressions of faces for you and then give you social cues according to those.”
该应用程序解决了一大问题，因为自闭症患者经常难以辨别他人的面部表情，包括：开心、悲伤、厌恶、惊讶甚至卖萌撒娇。“我们的想法基本上就是，通过某种行为来帮助辨识面部表情，然后再向你传达人们的不同情绪。”

Advocates for the autistic community say the app is just a small part of the support the growing autistic community needs as they age.“Anything that can help this population is very welcome and very very important.But technology, even the best technology is... will never be enough because we are dealing with the population with very, often very very profound needs.”
关爱自闭症患者的社区倡导者表示，在自闭症儿童们的成长过程中，该应用程序只能起到一小部分作用。“任何可以帮助这个群体的事情都是非常受欢迎的，也非常非常重要。但科技，即使是最先进的科技也是不够的，因为我们所面对的这一特殊群体，经常有着更深层次的需求。”

Julian’s mother says she has seen a change, “it has helped our son who is using the Google Glasses connect with the family more.He is talking more to us and he is, seems to be pausing more to just kind of gather information from us in conversation that I don’t remember him doing before the program.”
朱利安的妈妈说她在自己孩子身上看到了转变。 “通过使用谷歌眼镜，它帮助我们的儿子与家人的关系更贴近。我们之间的聊天也越来越多，而且在跟我们的交流过程中，他会有更多的停顿，就好像是在收集处理聊天信息，没参加这个项目之前，我不记得他有这样的行为。”

And Julian is also a fan of the app, “I really think it would help us autistic people.”The researchers are working to quantify more precisely if and how the app helps autistic children.But if they can show positive results, the app could be commercially available in the next few years.
而朱利安也是该应用的粉丝。“我真的认为这会帮助我们这些患有自闭症的人。”研究人员正在努力实现更准确的数据量化，以弄清该应用程序是如何帮助自闭症儿童的。如果他们能够取得积极的成果，那么在未来几年内，这款应用程序将投放于市场进行销售。

Kevin Enochs, VOA News.
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