Below is a general skill sequence for helping learners understand basic emotions using faces.
As the learner develops the ability to recognize faces and basic facial expressions and emotions found in simple examples (see Emoticons or similar), the learner can move on to more complex examples. This skill area seeks to target basic emotions with familiar people and then fades the faces of strangers in to the emotional identification process. As the learner masters this area, it opens doors for more complex expressions, emotions, and body language across a variety of people. This seeks to address the socio-emotional deficits that the learner might be experiencing.
Treatment Plan Goal Ideas
This is a list of treatment plan goals. These are different from the goals you will find in the skill sequence below. Your treatment plan goals encompass any number of goals from the skill sequence. Sometime they will include multiple goals from the sequence (”Learner will label 5 toys”) and sometimes the treatment plan goal will be simply consist of a really important goal from the skill sequence (”Will label caregiver”). An analogy I like to use goes as follows: Each skill sequence goal (commonly known as a “target”) represent each stair in a flight of stairs. The treatment plan goal is the flight itself.
Treatment plan goal ideas for this particular skill area are as follows:
- When presented with a real life facial expression (or a 2D sample), learner will label the corresponding emotion for five emotions across three familiar people.
- When presented with a real life facial expression (or a 2D sample), learner will label the corresponding emotion for five emotions across three unfamiliar people.
Component Skills
Your learner may need to be fluent in these component skills first before introducing this goal/skill area. Component skills for this skill sequence may include skill areas that are fundamental to other areas. Fluency in the skill areas listed below may increase the likelihood that your learner will succeed in this skill sequence and those afterward.
Intro to Scanning 
Intro to Matching (Visual Perception) 
Following Gestures
Matches Common Items in 2D Array 1.0 (Identical)
Receptively IDs Common Items in 2D Array
Labels Common Items 1.0
Labels Familiar People
Receptively IDs Emoticon Expressions in 2D Array
Labels Emoticon Expressions in 2D 
Labels Emoticon Emotion in 2DSkill Possibilities
Below is a possible skill sequence for working on increasing your learner’s ability to label basic emotions. Note that every learner is different and that you likely will need to tweak and vary some programming to their needs. Click the triangle icon to view the full description for each skill in the sequence/area.
Concurrent Skills
Working on these skills at the same time could help with goal mastery. Maybe your learner has mastered these skills already. Perhaps they are already listed as component skills above. That’s okay! Targeting other learning channels might help your learner.
Labels Own BehaviorLabels Emoticon Expressions in 2D 
Labels with Noun-Verb Combos 1.0Labels Emoticon Emotion in 2DComposite Skills
These are the possible next steps for learners who have mastered, or are mastering, the skills listed above. Note that new skill areas may require fluency in other component skills not listed above. Also, you can introduce composite skill sequences prematurely to keep your learner progressing, as generativity may occur earlier than expected.
Labels Emotions of Family & Strangers (Body Language) (Coming Soon!)
Follow the link below to better understand component-composite analysis.
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