Alex took part in a pilot study in which a smartphone app paired with Google Glass was shown to help children with autism understand emotions conveyed in facial expressions. Steve Fisch

Wearing a device that identifies other people’s facial expressions can help children with autism develop better social skills, a Stanford University School of Medicine pilot study has demonstrated.

Prior to participating in the study, Alex, 9, found it overwhelming to look people in the eye. Gentle encouragement from his mother, Donji Cullenbine, hadn’t helped. “I would smile and say things like, ‘You looked at me three times today!’ But it didn’t really move the bar,” she said. Using Google Glass transformed how Alex felt about looking at faces, Cullenbine said. “It was a game environment in which he wanted to win — he wanted to guess right.”

The device, which was linked with a smartphone through a local wireless network, consists of a glasses-like frame equipped with a camera to record the wearer’s field of view, as well as a small screen and a speaker to give the wearer visual and audio information. As the child interacts with others, the app identifies and names their emotions through the Google Glass speaker or screen. After one to three months of regular use, parents reported that children with autism made more eye contact and related better to others.

The treatment could help fill a major gap in autism care: because of a shortage of trained therapists, children face long waiting times after an autism diagnosis to begin receiving treatment.