Several tools have recently been developed and shown effective results both in the US and UK. One company with a great face recognition game is Do2Learn, founded by Dorothy Strickland, one of the earliest researchers in the virtual reality field. Her game(s) serve a number of functions that are listed under Best Practices in the tab to the left.
Another great tool was developed by Casey Wimsatt of FaceSay.
One new tool I learned about at ISTE 2010 is called Bitstrips and was developed by Shaham Panth and Jacob Blackstock see links here to several articles written about them and their new educational technology company. While not developed for students with ASD, these entrepreneurs have been hearing from teachers about great results with such students from all over Canada where the software has been implemented in the schools. I will update this page with stories from teachers about how they are using the exceptional facial expression functionality (you can include up to 8 different expressions, 5 different eyelid positions and even more positions for the eyebrows to create a variety of facial expressions and grimaces--in addition you are able to modify gestures of the character)
Finally, the Transporters, developed by Ofer Golan, and Simon Baron Cohen and colleagues demonstrates how important objects of interest, particularly mechanical ones to 'bootstrapping' typically uninteresting facial and social information for this population. I have attached here a number of papers and a link to the program for you to review.