Emotional Intelligence Training Tools Helping People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Build Emotional Intelligence Skills on Social Media that Transition to the Real World.

The goal of this project is to improve social and emotional skills of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and, among people without ASD, both increase social and emotional skills, and enhance accommodation of people with ASD. This project iteratively develops, tests, and evaluates the usability and effectiveness of emotional intelligence training tools developed in the context of an existing social discussion platform website, followed by artificial intelligence (AI) personalization and a leadership module in subsequent phases of the project. The objective is to demonstrate that a combination of increased social and emotional skills of people with and without ASD and increased accommodation of people with ASD by people without ASD will have measurable positive impacts on people with ASD. Project outcomes include: (1) increased emotional intelligence of people with ASD from training, resulting in improved relationships online and in the real world; and (2) increased emotional intelligence of people without ASD with greater accommodation of people with ASD. This project is conducted in partnership with experts in technology development for people with ASD and other disabilities from Easter Seals Greater Houston.