Emotion detectors

It's easy for most people to tell whether the person they're talking to is happy or angry just by looking.

Now, scientists at MIT's Media Lab are developing a wearable device they say is capable of helping people read the subtlest, most nuanced emotions in another person by tracking the movements of that person's eyebrows, lips, and other facial features.

Eventually, the researchers say, a tiny camera will be mounted to a pair of glasses or a baseball cap, and the wearer will be alerted by a hand-held computer when the person on the other side of the conversation is bored, annoyed, or confused.

''We are trying to develop technology that can help understand facial expressions and emotions and use that information to augment human-to-human interaction," Rana El Kaliouby, the post-doctoral fellow developing the device, said yesterday.

Also, the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on a similar device that would do the opposite. It would help wearers monitor their own emotions, whether, for instance, they are frowning too much.

When the technology is ready, researchers say, it could have a variety of applications, from the frivolous to the transcendental. It could be used as a dating aid for the emotionally clueless or wind up under the Christmas tree as a nudging gift for an insensitive spouse.

But it could also be used to help people with autism in their everyday lives. One of the disorders associated with autism is a condition some scientists call ''mind blindness," the inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes and understand that person's emotions. There are about 1 million to 1.5 million Americans with autism, according to the Autism Society of America.

By wearing this device, they could better negotiate the complex map of expressions they encounter on the faces of the people they talk to or meet, possibly helping them keep jobs and make friends.

''For autistic people, it is very difficult to pick up the subtle nuances of emotion," said Lee Grossman, president of the Autism Society of America. ''When you can't relate with or connect to somebody, it can be damaging to long-term employment possibilities or how you are looked at by peers."

The ''emotional social intelligence prosthetic" device is the latest in technology that focuses on helping computers read and relay human emotions. But while the technology has traditionally focused on helping machines understand people, now it is being used to help people understand people.

''To me what is exciting is that you can have a wearable device that gives people with autism or people who have trouble reading emotions the opportunity to go out in the real world and learn about emotions and faces with the people they usually interact with," El Kaliouby said in a telephone interview.

Still, the device needs refining and might not be on the market for five years.

It is not very accurate, El Kaliouby said, so while it could work well for someone with autism, it would need to be more finely tuned to help people who read emotions a little better than autistic people do.

It also needs to be refined to be more user-friendly. Currently, a computer screen with a graph on it indicates the probability that the person being monitored is feeling a certain emotion. In the future, a vibration or noise would alert the device's wearers of the emotion their boss or dinner partner is feeling.

''It's in its early days," El Kaliouby said.

While the device would be most useful for people with autism and people on the low end of the empathy spectrum, she said, it could also be used by others who simply do not feel well enough or are too busy to pay attention to how others are feeling. It could also be used at a job interview or when meeting strangers.

''We don't even know all the ways it can be used; it's all new," she said.

Stephen Shore, who has autism and is finishing a doctoral program in education at Boston University, said he was concerned that people might use the device as an emotional lie detector. He also said that it could be troublesome if it revealed emotions that people were trying to hide. But on the whole, he said, it sounds promising.

''This tool can be valuable for teaching people with autism about communication styles of nonautistic people," he said.

Shore also says, however, that it is important to remember that while people with autism don't communicate as most other people do, that doesn't mean they don't communicate at all.

''It seems to me that when people with autism get together, we understand each other quite well," he said. ''This whole issue of mind-blindness might cut both ways."