I know a 16-year-old boy who is addicted to video games. By ‘addiction’, I mean that he is compelled to play them for several to many hours each day, even while he knows that it is in his own best interests to limit his play time, even while his parents continually (ineffectively) try to curtail the time he spends at this activity, and because, more than a little ashamed of himself, he often attempts to conceal his level of game play. Does this matter, for this boy?
There is a book titled “Everything Bad is Good for You” by Steven Johnson that is all about the benefits of video game play (and other media) for children. It describes video games as a rich, positive basis for learning and reasoning. And so they are. A person can acquire a magnificent body of knowledge and considerably refine perceptual, cognitive and motoric skills and abilities within the artificial world of gaming.
But what AREN’T they achieving? They aren’t reading. They don’t provide very significant sources of content about the things or ways or the histories of real things in the real world. They are not sources of valuable conversational input, and they certainly do not evoke conversational responses. They rarely evoke complex thought. While they are rich in cleverness, they’re impoverished in wisdom. With rare exception, they are not exercises designed for the development of social skills, or of emotional control. They provide only limited opportunities for open, free, integrative thought. The rules and challenges that they employ follow closed sets that are only pale reflections of the variance and surprises and complexities that actually occur in the real world. With some notable exceptions (like DDR and Wi games), they don’t exactly contribute to the elaboration of control of coordinated movements. The repertoires of information that they deliver apply to the game, but not to the world at large. These games individually and collectively teach an ethic, but not necessarily one a thoughtful parent would seek as a model for a young man or woman.
I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon about this subject. Playing games delivered by the computer or game player can be damn captivating and entertaining, and can have very useful learning dimensions. But I do strongly believe that a parent should understand that as with any serious, rewarded activity, a child spending hours each day playing video games on their PDA or game player or computer pays a price for it, and is changing in their interests and personality and socialization in ways that are not in every way positive for their intellectual and social development. Steven Johnson accepts and applauds these differences. I say, “For God’s Sake, Steven! In moderation!”.
Afterword: An autistic child can LOVE video games. They often play them facilely, and in game play, appear to be completely normal. When the get up from their chair, turn around, and re-enter the real world, they’re autistic again.
Put another way, autistic individuals frequently demonstrate, clear as glass, that game worlds are not real worlds.
Did not I tell before that I am not discussing Autism here?
I am having fun playing a non zero game here in a linear situation where A is followed by B and B triggers C. Non linear situation is something else. A is followed by B,C and D at the same time and each of them triggers other situations-like a nuclear fission reaction.
But one thing I have formulated through my game is about ‘how to annoy typical people if you really want to enjoy a game.’
You do not annoy typical people with a scorpion sting.
You really need to be a fly with ‘now I am here – now I am there’ move. Give a little bit here and a little bit there. That way typical people get the bait and exhaust themselves with all sorts of explanations of what they do and why they do (as if I am impressed!), why I said this and why I said that ( I am impressed with that because that is cortical reasoning). The fun with this game which I like to play is better than video game because it brings people to really think. I want exactly that to happen. You did well.
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Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
Dan asks Tito, “I wanted to ask about the extent that you may have benefited from science … .”
The last I heard, Tito generously allowed scientists to use him as a subject and participated in their research, and then he was denied the results of it, although the results have been disclosed to and discussed with at least one unrelated third party who is not a scientist. So, science has benefited from Tito. If that situation hasn’t been rectified by now, maybe Tito would benefit from science by receiving the reports of his testing and having an opportunity to discuss them with the researchers. Quid pro quo. I’ll bet somebody around here could make that happen!
Tito I think this was more of a game. You expressed many important things that were clues for further discussion. You shared some aspects of larger opinions you hold about autism, which led to my inquiry into what your underlying view is of autism.
I think your ideas about the senses and sensory perception are interesting and that you’ve benefited greatly from your discussions with some of the scientists and physicians you’ve worked with. I think it’s important to discuss the extent you have benefited — as I discussed above at http://merzenich.positscience.com/2007/08/17/a-connected-kid/#comment-217
many of the the notions, terms, ideas, and inquiry you have stems from science?
Relatedly, do you think that without the science information you would have been able to describe and explain your sensory perceptions, or, as well as you do? Do you think there are ways to describe your perceptions without scientific notions?
Anne, setting aside the subject of what you mention, do you think it is appropriate to post that on a blog? You allude to what appears to be private discussions and activities that took place in a context of confidentiality. You seem to have an absence of respect for this, and/or perhaps you can’t conceive of the importance of confidentiality, and how your and others gossip is contrary to this, and a misuse of a scientists blog.
You persistently engage in pessimism here (in contrast to intelligent skepticism), starting with your post #1, which you still maintain in post #45, despite the discussion from post #2 onward.
Now you engage in gossip, about things you do not have all of the information about. Also you make insinuations, which are further gossip.
Also, your one sentence quote of what I wrote in my posts #50 and #51 misses, yet again, the main points. You are persistent in doing this, first missing Dr. Merzenich’s simply points in his article, and expressing emotional pessimism about what he stated and with no explanation for your position.
I was hoping this blog would be different than what is typical on Internet blogs.
some questions: autistic people – scientists, a misunderstanding in the treatment steps or a goal without target?
http://neuroscience-bucharest.blogspot.com/2007/09/
autism-between-science-and-every-day.html
Dan, You may be earnest, but it seems that you are getting the most emotional of everyone over this discussion. And your last post about confidentiality…. is that referencing Iversen’s book Strange Son? I hardly think you can place blame on Tito for that piece of gossip. I don’t see gossip or malice in Tito’s posts here, but it does seem that you are getting needlessly distressed. Finally, you accuse Tito of benefiting from the scientists, but Tito’s first book about sensory experience was written when he was between 8-11 years old, before he had ever met any scientist. So why are you making such accusations?
I learnt about nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, black holes and other sciences not in one of those labs. I learnt about game theory and calculus, set theory, co-ordinate or solid geometry, not from scientists. Mother taught me to be a seeker.
Mother taught me Chaucer and mother taught me how to enjoy Byron and Keats. Mother taught me Spinoza, Plato and Descarte.
Why should I need a few lab scientists to learn? Why should I limit my learning to science?
My life is not all science. It has poetry in it. It has fun in it. It has so much space in it left to complete, so many stories to write and so much to learn.
Before coming to the US, in 2001, I realized, ‘How can I know sit for my tests without knowing about neuro science?’ So I did my home work before coming to the United States. I began going to several British Library branches in India to get the required education so that when I am facing the tests I understand what is going on . Some books were there at home too as mother started reading them when I got diagnosed with Autism to understand me. We have books on Psychology too. So why should lab scientists teach me?
In fact it is I who trusted the scientists and believed that they would show some sort of respect towards me. But since it did not happen that way because they never bothered to give me the results (I am still waiting) I think I must forgive them. That is the best I can do. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. I can request them but can I make them give?
But I must end my work in this place because some of your egos are making you too childish. When your impulse work that way, its your amygdala which works. And even a cave man can tell what happens when the limbic flow from that direction. You can always ask your cortex to work so that the reason takes over the emotion. -So says Mr. Spock.
But you all are doing well in this fun game.
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Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
strangeson.comautismtoday.comcbsnews.comConstance, I am the one who is accused of posting gossip and disregarding Tito’s right to confidentiality. Since Dan brings it up, I do think that the confidentiality issue is interesting. The right of confidentiality belongs to the subject, not the researcher or the funding source of the research. Research subjects have confidentiality rights under HIPAA. Researchers can disclose information about their research, but information about the identity of the subject is confidential and, absent a waiver by the subject, cannot be disclosed by the researcher. Yet, see the following:
Dr. Merzenich talks to Portia Iverson in detail about his work with Tito, and she posts the discussion on the internet:
http://www.strangeson.com/media/MERZENICH%20interview%20(from%20docu)%20REVISED%20for%20website.pdf
Dr. Merzenich talks to the New York times about his work with Tito:
http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/A_Boy_A_Mother.htm
Dr. Merzenich goes on 60 Minutes to talk about his work with Tito:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/14/60II/main536416.shtml
And, of course, Portia Iverson wrote a book, Strange Son, that discusses Dr. Merzenich’s work with Tito.
Those are facts concerning public disclosure regarding research on this identified subject, Tito.
I don’t know the facts concerning any waiver of this subject’s right of confidentiality but I will assume for the sake of this discussion that one of Tito’s parents (he was a minor child at the time) legally did so after full disclosure of the confidentiality rights.
So, given the unusual approach to confidentiality that has been taken in this case, and given all the effort Tito put in, I think it would be fair to allow him to benefit from science by receiving the reports on the research in which he participated. Dan, in an effort to reign in my pessimism, I will remain optimistic that this will be done!
56 Constance
… you accuse Tito of benefiting from the scientists, but Tito’s first book about sensory experience was written when he was between 8-11 years old, before he had ever met any scientist. So why are you making such accusations?
It would be interesting to hear more about this from Tito. Also, which book?
If would be helpful if he could discuss or list some of the main points he makes in his book regarding his “sensory experience”, and, especially, what he bases were for his descriptions.
It’s my inclination, from reading some of his writing, and watching some television interviews and other video interviews of him, that he, even at that age, was benefited greatly by the thought, observations, descriptions, and explanations of Donna Williams, which of course is alright, but which, also of course, should be made clear, as it is always important to provide the sources you have benefited from, and exactly how you have benefited from them.
As Tito mentions above, he and his mother were very active in learning in a wide variety of different disciplines, and from a very early age … he also comments that in 2001 (before his first book?) he was active in researching and learning about autism with his mother, which is the time I believe they both studied some of Donna William’s books.
Tito mentions in his last post that his learning of science wasn’t from the “lab scientists” but rather …
“Before coming to the US, in 2001 … I did my home work before coming to the United States. I began going to several British Library branches in India to get the required education so that when I am facing the tests [lab tests] I understand what is going on . Some books were there at home too as mother started reading them when I got diagnosed with Autism to understand me. We have books on Psychology too.”
This is also to benefit from scientists, not the lab scientists worked with, but the scientists who wrote the works that were read and learned from. Same thing.
Anyway, reading about Williams, Grandin, Tito, etc, about their accounts of their sensory experiences, has often been confusing, as there does not seem to be a clear account of what each person contributed to the discipline of autism study, the bases for their contributions (to what extent the descriptions are their own, to what extent they were benefited from reading science and/or discussing with their doctors and scientists, to what extent they have been influenced if at all by others with autism and their descriptions), whose ideas and descriptions are whose, who is the originator of certain descriptions and ideas, etc.
I was hoping this blog would be more actively run by Dr. Merzenich and also hopefully many at the Keck Center at UC-San Francisco (which is often ranked at the US’s best neuroscience center). I didn’t expect to encounter this kind of discussion, but decided to proceed anyway, at the start of the posts to clarify and expand on a important comment made by Dr. Merzenich, which has considerable basis (which I discussed at length from my perspective, but which Dr. Merzenich and others could clarify and expand much better than I). The quality of the above discussion largely reminds me of some discussions typical at the first year student in college, or senior level in high school. Moving forward on this blog, I think it would be more useful for me to formulate the underlying views of others, if I can, based on the disorganized thought fragments and unclear arguments they provide. In particular, I have a fairly full competing conception of autism formulated based on the scattered pieces of notions of Amanda and Tito, and others. I think the conception underlying their statements is fundamentally different than, and a dramatic objection to, the current conception as based on the DSM criteria.
I made a few requests for the others to provide this discussion, which would reveal their underlying system of ideas, and in this way we would be clearer about what their ideas are. My impression, as we have proceeded in this discussion, is that they do not have a clear system of ideas, but rather have what I mentioned above, along with a considerable about of emotional utterances, that is, criticisms, objections, etc, that were not explained in even a minimal way. An objection without explanation is emotion, and as such is meaningless conceptually. For example, if the extent of the objection is “I disagree with X and Y, it was inappropriate for X to do Y” and that is all that is stated. This is the beginning of the discussion, not the end.
“real worlds” vs “non-real worlds”
The question whether, if an autistic person can do something adeptly and and with considerable interest, what is being done can be considered a non-real world. The first example given in the above article by Dr. Merzenich was a video game, and explanation was provided in this article, and other recent articles, about real world based activity and the effects on the brain, and non-real world activity and the effects on the brain.
What else can autistic and Aspergers’s people do adeptly and with considerable interest. Stimming activities, writing, reading, academics, art, gardening, other essentially solitary activities involving minimal levels of social interaction.
Are these activities, themselves, of the non-real world? No and the point was never that they are in themselves. When done for the majority of a person’s daily life, are they. It seems there is a good basis to think so. An Asperger’s person who sits in a chair and reads in a sensory deprived room for 6+ hours a day in academics, and writes more hours in that day, and is outside of his or her apartment for 15 minutes to 2 or so hours a day on average, either speaks with no one, or maybe only a few people very briefly … Is this life of the real world, or is the activity of this live apart from the world (the world of environmental stimuli, social activity, social relationships, expression and exchange of emotion and thoughts, visual and tactile experience of other people, etc). Solitary intellectual activity, in itself, is not of the non-real world, but when it dominates the majority of one’s life, it is. That someone with autism or Aspergers can do this for the majority of their lives serves as additional support for this. Such a life is, comparatively, profoundly limited in a myriad of fundamental ways.
Why be concerned with this? To begin, some choose this kind of course of life due to psychological factors, like the boy in the above article playing video games for the majority of the day. He and the others have the option of taking part in other activities. And they can benefit greatly in terms of fulfillment and brain development and health by taking part in other activities, just as someone who due to various psychological factors chooses to live a reclusive life in academics, when he or she has other options available.
Secondly, the Asperger’s person does not have those options. She is doing the best she can with her impoverished emotional, social, and communicative abilities. (Social and intra-personal expression of emotion through interpersonal exchange of eye gaze, facial expression, tone of voice, method of speech, etc. Emotions that arise from social and environmental events, emotions that are related to the environmental events, emotions that are apparent to others, emotions that are expressed to others, emotions that are experienced directly and clearly by the person and others. Verbal communication abilities, verbal expression of language, listening to the verbal expression of others, understanding and experiencing the perspective and feelings of others based on their verbal expressions. Non-verbal communication: communication through expression of eye gaze, facial expression, physical mannerisms, etc, all of which are directly relevant to the context one is in, the people one is with, and related to the verbal communication taking place. To name only a few things). This is what autism/Aspergers is. If she doesn’t have these impoverishments, then she does not have Aspergers.
There is considerable basis for the parents of the child in the article to intervene into the child’s life and help him. Life is more rewarding, challenging, meaningful, healthy, etc, when doing more activities of a real-world nature during the day rather than video games. And again, further support for this is that many with impoverished social, communicative, emotional, behavioral, etc, abilities (of the nature described in the above paragraph) can engage with video games well and with substantial interest.
An analogy. Croquette can be a fun and challenging game. If a person has already demonstrated the ability to do a sport fairly well, or generally the ability to engage in a higher level of physical activity that entails substantial benefits for their physical health, but at some point in their lives, due to some psychological factors, limits their sustained physical activity to Croquette, then there is a strong basis to discuss with this person what might be occurring such that they no longer take part in physical activities that directly benefit their basic physical health. Maybe there is something that can be resolved such that the person would come to an understanding of this and value their decision to return to utilizing his or her physical abilities for the purpose of his or her health. This person has this option. It is reasonable to think it is better in many senses to be physically healthy, as is its better to be mentally active, rather than playing video games for most of the day. For those who are not concerned with physical or mental health, these things are not reasonable, and they ignore such things. Rationality concerns one’s well-being, and to neglect reasons for being mentally and physically health (at least minimally so), then this person is irrational to some degree. Those who reject rationality seem conceptually impoverished, or most likely have substantial psychological problems underlying their views.
Completing the analogy. Many who are unfortunately physically disabled to certain degrees can take part in croquette, and other similar minimal physical activities. This is further support to the above person that there are good reasons for him to take part in other physical activities for his exercise, in light of how he has the abilities to do so, and in light of how those activities will have a positive impact on his ongoing phycial health (and in many ways, mental health as well).
A major effort of many in elementary schools and beyond, and parents and family, and others, is to provide challenges that bring out the best in people, and to encourage them to do their best in many ways. Many people, for various reasons and factors, either are limited by others or the situation they are in, or limited by themselves, and a major effort, and I think valuable effort, is to catch this, reveal it, show there are other possibilities, help or guide them to achieve more.
Scientist: “So what would happen to this player in your game?”
Tito: “He will talk his confusions out.”
Scientist : “How long would he continue?”
Tito: “As long as I push the button.”
(This is the most confidential part of the conversation. No one must know about it.)
It is my understanding, possibly incorrect, that there was no IRB approval of the research done on Tito by Merzenich. Is this true?
I wonder if Anne the lawyer would like to ask Dr. Merzenich this “was there IRB approval of the research done on Tito at UCSF as recorded in the book, “Strange Son” that Portia Iversen has profited from but Tito has NOT.
I have asked about the IRB before here and my comment never made it past the censor.
And the gross smugness here from the “students” is suffocating, and puts me in mind of the good doctor M. The level of ignorance about autism at UCSF surely rivals that of the ignorance about autism as UCD. Speaking as a recent grad of the UCD biopsych program (Psi Chi, even).
UCSF might benefit from getting Jenny McCarthy to TA (note, not T&A) a intro to abnormal psych course, because even Jenny knows autism is sometimes there from birth. (starts after three years? REALLY? Since when? Someone needs to inform the guys and gals writing the DSM)
I wonder if a poker face on a poker player is dysfunctional? I wonder if poker players are autistic?
And unlike, Anne, I have an ASD dx, so does one of my two kids.
Hypergraphia anyone?