About the Affect Production Task (APT)

The Affect Production Task (APT) is a multimodal, objective tool designed to measure how effectively individuals express emotions through their face and voice. Using digital phenotyping and machine learning, we are training algorithms on human ratings of emotion to learn to interpret facial and vocal cues the way people naturally do, providing a precise and scalable way to quantify affective communication.

This project addresses a critical gap in current assessment—there are no standardized tools to objectively measure affect production, a key challenge in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related conditions. By creating a remote, accessible, and unbiased measure of expressive ability, the APT aims to advance both clinical assessment and research, enabling more accurate identification, monitoring, and understanding of social communication differences.