App Profile: Emotions & Feelings Social Story

This app includes a social story about different emotions and feelings you may have throughout the day, and a simple visual support for asking how someone is feeling, or identifying feelings or emotions. The story focuses on why or when a person may feel something, and what may cause different feelings or emotions.

The app opens up to a menu that lets the user choose to either read the story or go to the “Emotions and Feelings” page. The social story describes different emotions and feelings, and what may cause them. The “Emotions and Feelings” page has nine buttons with different emotions and feelings from the story that say the word when pushed.

Children with Autism Spectrum disorders often have difficulty recognizing or identifying emotions and feelings. They often miss the facial cues that other people rely on to gauge the moods of others, or even of themselves. Teaching social skills such as recognizing or describing emotions and feelings to any child may be easier and less stressful when visual supports, like social stories are used.

Typical children usually develop an understanding of emotions and feelings without direct instruction from adults. This makes it is easy to forget that this may not be the case for everyone. Certain individuals, particularly those with social or communication delays, like someone diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, may need more direct instruction in this important skill.

Social stories are an important type of visual support often used with children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome or other special need. This social story uses simple text and descriptive pictures to describe common emotions and feelings and identify when and why they may occur.

Social stories were first defined by Carol Gray in 1991 and are commonly used to break down a task or social situation into small and easy to understand steps, often accompanied by descriptive pictures. Social stories are easy to implement and are used by many professionals for a wide range of behaviors and skills.