Someone just sent me this cutting from a UK newspaper. I thought I would share it since it seems to explain a lot of what goes on here....


"People who are addicted to playing computer games show some of the same personality traits as people with Aspergers syndrome.

This is the conclusion of Dr John Charlton of the University of Bolton and Ian Danforth of Whitman College, USA. Their results will be presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference in Dublin today, Thursday 3 April 2008.

The researchers questioned 391 computer game players, 86 per cent of whom were male. They considered relationships between addiction,‘high engagement’ and personality.
They found that the closer the players got to addiction the more likely they were to display negative personality traits. And that as players showed more signs of addiction they were increasingly characterised by three personality traits that would normally be associated with Aspergers, a variety of high functioning autism. These were neuroticism, and lack of extraversion and agreeableness.
The researchers believe that these people are not classifiable as having Aspergers syndrome but share some of the same characteristics because they find it easier to empathise with computer systems than other people.
Dr Charlton said:“The thinking in the field is that there is a scale along which people, even those considered to be‘normal’, can be placed upon. And that people such as engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists are nearer to the non-empathising, systemising, end of the spectrum, with people with Aspergers syndrome even further along again.

“Our research supports the idea that people who are heavily involved in game playing may be nearer to autistic spectrum disorders than people who have no interest in gaming.”

If the cap fits, wear it!

Empirically speaking, undeniable!

When this article first came out a lot of the media and folks on the net were trying to say that hard core gamer had Aspergers. I take exception to this, I had a friend with Aspergers and trust me, there is no mistaking a gamer for someone with Aspergers, lol. He was a cool dude to hang out with, be sure.

quote:

If the cap fits, wear it!

TrackIR hat, presumably

quote:

Originally posted by Urufu_Shinjiro:
When this article first came out a lot of the media and folks on the net were trying to say that hard core gamer had Aspergers. I take exception to this, I had a friend with Aspergers and trust me, there is no mistaking a gamer for someone with Aspergers, lol. He was a cool dude to hang out with, be sure.

Agreed, I’ve a family member with aspergers and I am quite sure they would love to deal with the issues a ‘gamer’ has to deal with opposed to their own

How is a lack of extraversion a negative personality trait. The negative personality trait are those whom treat others like **** so they retreat off into their own world. ****ing bull**** shrinks who know nothing of their subject because theyve never been there themselves. Aspergers is a whole different ball game to gamers. Gamers = social anxiety....Aspergers = neurological diversity, as in they cannot recognize facial expressions etc

Im a really empethatic person yet Im a gamer. Humanity just gets me down. I think most people are tossers. So do a lot of other people. That doesnt make these 'loners' lack empathy. They just see the bull**** for what it is. Yet another article for the socialites to stigmatize the downtrodden.

Us quiet strong types are far cooler than they ever will be.

Drunken rant over.

Well it certainly rang a few bells for you Aimail m8. Nobody was actually saying that you (especially) have Asperger traits, just that it's an observable phenomenon amongst some of the people they interviewed. I can well believe it.

There is a spectrum to this condition, ranging from mild to strong. Quite a few people (mainly men) I meet do have the mild form. And more than a couple of them are 'socialites'. I don't think this is meant as a slur anyway.

regards

B

Certainly not meant as a slur to anyone, introverted, autistic or otherwise, but it did make me think, since I am a gamer, introverted and fond of systemization myself. Though I am extremely agreeable.

We have all seen those threads where two or three males who are obviously intelligent in a geeky way go at one another hammer and tongs with page after page of graphs, formulae, and learned references about some obscure point of aeronautic engineering etc yet each seems completely unwilling to acknowledge that they have anything to learn from one other. Certainly seems like over-systemizing lack of agreeableness sometimes, albeit extremely entertaining.

My issue with the analysis in the article, apart from the irony of the doctors medicalizing all aspects of human variation and then accusing others of lack of empathy, is that most gamers do not identify with their PCs, rather with the virtual characters who inhabit our games, perhaps campaign pilots or our favourite dunmer sorceress. I would hazard that most gamers actually know little about their PCs, or playstations or whatever, seeing them as magic portals to other dimensions. Fortunately for us - and I put myself in that category - the minority who do understand PCs are usually very willing to answer our plaintive cries when something is amiss over at the Community Help forum. (Excluding the few horrible goblins who are never happier than when they are posting "RTFM" or "This forum has a search function, noob" as if they owned the place).

Gaming in this sense actually takes a good deal of empathy; it is the "normal" people who are unable to understand why we can get so worked up about the fate of a virtual character, as though physical non-existence made their destiny any less absorbing. Given that the defining feature of autism/aspergers is the inability to empathize - which is just to say the inability to use intentionality as an explanatory paradigm - the article seems to me to fly in the face of the facts.