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I was recently (15 months ago) diagnosed with high functioning autism. I'm now 40 so it's a very late diagnosis.
I strongly believe that this was a major contributing factor in getting into wargaming.
My autism is quite mild but enough to seriously affect my personal life.
I don't have any savant traits & when I game I'm tactically inept!
My memory is very good though but sometimes I do misremember things but believe that I'm right. I'm now used to admitting that I'm wrong when I am - something that I've learned to do over the years.

I just wanted to know how many other people on Dakka Dakka are also autistic & what your experience you have regarding the hobby (ie does it help or hinder you).

Thank you for reading.
Adam

I'm not, but we did have a guy at an old FLGS who was, and he was alright, sometimes it was tough to understand what he was saying but he fit in perfectly.

If you've made it this far with no problems I would forget the diagnosis and keep on keeping on.

As an aside I work at night and lack sleep, so I will literally forget that I'm speaking to someone in the middle of a conversation. So memory is an issue for me.

 bubber wrote:

My memory is very good though but sometimes I do misremember things but believe that I'm right. I'm now used to admitting that I'm wrong when I am - something that I've learned to do over the years.

Huh... maybe I'm 'autistic' too.

I'm not too well versed in autism, what it is, etc. but the more I read about it and learn about it, the more I'm convinced its not really a disorder, just a different state of 'being', I guess you could say a different personality type or something. Any 'disability' that autistic people may have, I think is more an issue of society not knowing how to 'interact' and communicate properly with autistic people than it is an issue with autists themselves.

Here is the article that has kind of lead me down that path of reasoning: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/magazine/reaching-my-autistic-son-through-disney.html

Caution: It made me cry.

 bubber wrote:
I was recently (15 months ago) diagnosed with high functioning autism. I'm now 40 so it's a very late diagnosis.
I strongly believe that this was a major contributing factor in getting into wargaming.
My autism is quite mild but enough to seriously affect my personal life.
I don't have any savant traits & when I game I'm tactically inept!
My memory is very good though but sometimes I do misremember things but believe that I'm right. I'm now used to admitting that I'm wrong when I am - something that I've learned to do over the years.

I just wanted to know how many other people on Dakka Dakka are also autistic & what your experience you have regarding the hobby (ie does it help or hinder you).

Thank you for reading.
Adam

Adam,

I'm not autistic, but it is great to see how candid you are about your diagnosis and your experiences with autism. Especially in the US, mental challenges, illnesses, and disabilities tend to carry far undue and unhealthy stigma, which can be a significant barrier to discussion about important topics and the willingness for individuals to seek diagnosis or treatment, to say noting about potential and quite unfair damage to people's self esteem.

This is a really interesting topic you've brought up. If you don't mind discussing it, what factors led to your diagnosis? Have you found that the diagnosis itself has helped you to address issues related to autism? With such a late in life diagnosis, I assume that you developed a lot of coping mechanisms on your own over the years.

I've had a lot of friends growing up who were autistic or had asberger's. They were by and large perfectly alright, well-functioning people who were looked down upon by their peers and mistreated by the educational system.

I've never been diagnosed with Autism, and I do not demonstrate any of the typical symptoms, so I guess it's safe to say that I do not have that syndrome.

However, in the many years that I have been involved with gaming, I have known multiple people who I suspect suffer from one of the various Autism Spectrum Disorders. One kid who regularly goes to the FLGS has Asperger's.

I am not autistic.
However, my experience with the local Mind Center, has shown me how positive an impact the war gaming hobby can have on people with a wide range of abilities .
Simply painting minatures can help people improve their fine motor skills,learning rules to fun games can help people with memory issues.
And the social interaction of playing games and just chatting about a shared experience helps people who are a bit introvert , or have problems with communication skills.

People are just people ,and people like to have hobbies.
Some enjoy war games like us.

If you enjoy your hobby , then it is helping you .It really is that simple.

Happy hobby time to one and all!

Shifting this to off-topic.

I'm not, but my sister has Asberger's. She's probably the coolest 9 year old out there, and she's incredibly smart, especially with computers. She loves learning, and the last time I was at the parent's house, she went on and on about how she was learning about Ancient Egypt, and spouting off all sorts of information! But, she's not the best in social situations outside of the family. After fighting with the local school district about her educational needs, my mom finally turned to homeschooling her, and it's been nothing but great. My parents started going to the local park about two years ago to help with the socialization barrier, and it's been a slow improvement.

Here she is last year on her birthday! So stinkin' cute

As I'm sure you're aware, Autism can take many forms, from quite severe levels to a simple higher-functioning brain. By the sounds of it you're in the latter group, and this can manifest itself often through being a bit socially awkward, but on the other hand people at this end of the spectrum tend to be more 'in to' their particular interests/hobbies, not to the point of obsession, but usually just making them a more interesting/knowledgeable person.

I'm either Aspergic, or display aspergic traits, and I don't think it's really impacted me in a negative way at all. I'm not the best in social situations, to say the least, and I sometimes have trouble picking up on social cues or body language. On the other hand, part of the syndrome can include things like greater attention to detail and good memory, hence why I'm something of a living rulebook for my gaming group. The attention to detail also helps me notice things more with painting. I've no idea whether these are actually symptoms and effects of the spectrum, or just a part of my personality, but to be honest, it doesn't bother me overmuch. I am who I am and I wouldn't change that.

There's also good research to suggest that the slight majority of people, and particularly men, are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, so by and large, it's not a disorder or disability except in extreme cases (a different kettle of fish entirely). You seem to have reacted fairly positively to the diagnosis, which is good, and remember that, ultimately, you've lived for 40 years without knowing it and have (I'm assuming) done fine. It's hopefully not going to change anything with your lifestyle now that it's diagnosed, so stay positive about it and don't let it bother you. Sounds obvious, but it's worth remembering.

And as said above, it may well be other people not knowing/understanding how to react to you, and the real answer there is: act like they would with anyone else. Treating you differently is probably only going to cause problems and make you feel excluded.

Congrats for being brave enough to talk about this, too.

Asperger's Syndrome is on the Autism Spectrum, and is much more common than many people realize. I'm not surprised that many people that were thought of as "odd" suffer from it.

 Paradigm wrote:


There's also good research to suggest that the slight majority of people, and particularly men, are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, so by and large, it's not a disorder or disability except in extreme cases (a different kettle of fish entirely). You seem to have reacted fairly positively to the diagnosis, which is good, and remember that, ultimately, you've lived for 40 years without knowing it and have (I'm assuming) done fine. It's hopefully not going to change anything with your lifestyle now that it's diagnosed, so stay positive about it and don't let it bother you. Sounds obvious, but it's worth remembering.

What Paradigm said.

Yup, hence my belief that 'autism' isn't really a disorder or whatever at all.

It's not really a yes or no answer so I didn't vote.
It is, as a few have already pointed out, a place within a spectrum.

I was interviewed, not told for two years, told I was, told I was again, then told at a meeting I'm not.

People.

My 5 year old daughter was finally diagnosed last year with high function autism. With girls it is apparently much harder to diagnose, but she'd been in speech therapy since she was 3.

I am not autistic, but my oldest daughter has Aspergers and some other issues.

One of her Aspergerber issues is the inability to reliably correlate cause and effect.. so games make little sense to her. Anything more tactical than Yahtzee gives her fits.

However, she is REALLY good at following directions.. so, if she is allowed to read the rules to a game for about a week, she can do well.

For all I know, I might be somewhere on the autism spectrum. I've always just figured that I pretty much have Social Anxiety Disorder (after seeing commercials about drugs for that years ago), but I've never really bothered to look into it too deeply. I have very little in the way of social skills, I cannot comprehend the concept of "small talk," I do not pick up on body language, hints or any other subtle cues that other people can easily grasp.

Somehow, I still found a beautiful woman willing to marry me, though.

 mega_bassist wrote:
I'm not, but my sister has Asberger's. She's probably the coolest 9 year old out there, and she's incredibly smart,

Spoiler:

especially with computers. She loves learning, and the last time I was at the parent's house, she went on and on about how she was learning about Ancient Egypt, and spouting off all sorts of information! But, she's not the best in social situations outside of the family. After fighting with the local school district about her educational needs, my mom finally turned to homeschooling her, and it's been nothing but great. My parents started going to the local park about two years ago to help with the socialization barrier, and it's been a slow improvement.

Here she is last year on her birthday! So stinkin' cute

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

Is she flipping us the finger?

I am just normally insane.

Yes.

At around 2 or 3 years old, I was learning to talking just like any other child; and then, out of nowhere, I completely reverted. Didn't even understand the concept of language. Wasn't till I was six I learned to talk. I've spent my entire childhood being that really weird, awkward kid in class. Luckily, and with much hard work, I've learned to pass as any normal, everyday person. Most of the time.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
For all I know, I might be somewhere on the autism spectrum. I've always just figured that I pretty much have Social Anxiety Disorder (after seeing commercials about drugs for that years ago), but I've never really bothered to look into it too deeply. I have very little in the way of social skills, I cannot comprehend the concept of "small talk," I do not pick up on body language, hints or any other subtle cues that other people can easily grasp.

Somehow, I still found a beautiful woman willing to marry me, though.

Plenty of people have poor social skills in the sense of being anxious or a self-centred narcissist or even just a person who prefers a certain degree of solitude(nb; I am not specifically referring to you with any of those examples, they're just that), but the inability to process and comprehend body language and other cues is suggestive. It might be worth doing the series of questionnaires and the interview to find out either way, I know my own diagnosis was liberating in some ways, it recontextualised a lot of events from earlier in my life and made them more understandable, particularly for my family.

Of course, it brings issues as well; people have very specific preconceptions about autism, when you say that word many people without prior personal experience only have two images in their mind - "eccentric super-genius" or "kid that makes weird noises and bangs their head off things when they're upset", they have no concept of a spectrum disorder and the idea that someone can appear superficially "normal" yet still have a form of autism can be difficult to accept, occasionally to the point that they will accuse you of lying. People take the ability to subconsciously "read" other people during conversation, the ability to form a rapport with other people without conscious effort on their part completely for granted. Most find it difficult to grasp that even to approach a level playing field with a neurotypical person, at least in my own case, required years of part-time study of behavioural science and a continual conscious effort during a conversation to analyse gestures, expressions, choice of words, and tone & cadence of speech(as well as attempting to moderate myself in all those respects) in addition to normal aspects of conversing like internalising the content of the other person's speech and formulating my own replies. Even then, it's all too easy to miss a cue that would indicate the other person is bored and is trying to politely extricate themselves, or that I'd failed to express myself properly and either confused or offended them. It also makes it difficult to determine when someone is being deceptive, or the difference between "banter" and someone who is just taking the piss in a malicious way. And of course the more people are involved in a conversation, the more taxing that experience becomes, almost exponentially so since you don't just have to analyse the interactions between yourself and another person, but between yourself and each of the other individuals involved AND the interactions between all of them.

I don't know that it had a particular effect on my getting into wargaming, but I suspect it's the reason I learned to read so quickly when I was young and subsequently developed such a strong preference for science fiction, so perhaps it did in the sense that I was essentially already a "nerd" by the end of my first year in primary school, heh.

First can I thank you all for responding to this thread, both those who have posted & those who have voted - I didn't think I would get this many replies!

Second, unfortunately for me, I believe that my autism has been a major contributing factor to me suffering from chronic depression for well over 15 years now.
For a long time I felt that I was just outside humanity looking in. Now I know the reason why. Since my depression diagnosis about 10 years ago I have received just 1 round of talking therapy - it seems the NHS prefers to chuck pills at you unless you either harm yourself or others. This, for me, makes the depression worse as I feel even more worthless.

Third, I really became aware of me possibly being autistic after watching a couple of TV show episodes in a short period of time when this was bought up - House & a British comedy drama called Doc Martin. I took quite a few years to get the diagnosis after this & it was finally down to a doctor I was seeing for chronic pain in my wrists - she understood that although the pain I suffer is bad, my depression & understanding why I am like I am was more important. Funding had to be agreed so I could use a service in Southampton which is in a different NHS trust.

Fourth, before I had my autism diagnosis I had hope of being 'normal' including having a relationship but didn't understand why this wasn't happening. Since the diagnosis although I now know why this was happening which gave me a sense of relief, it has also lessened the hope. As I said in my first post, my autism is not severe however this means that I am close enough to being 'normal' & seeing & wanting what other people have, socially, but far enough away that I feel that I will never get there.

Fifth, as my depression has worsened, I have done less & less hobby. Just putting models together has become a struggle. However I have recently played my first 2 games of Secrets of the Third Reich & this has helped me start to get back to enjoying the hobby.

Again, thank you everyone for posting - it's really interesting to hear other people's experience either having the condition or knowing someone who has it.
Also, although some of you may think this is brave of me to share such personal things, I've found with my autism I don't mind sharing things like this as I have a need to share information. I also believe that conditions like these are not talked about as much as they need to be, to help awareness & non-suffers understand how we view & experience the world.

That's it for now (probably my longest post).

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Yes.

At around 2 or 3 years old, I was learning to talking just like any other child; and then, out of nowhere, I completely reverted. Didn't even understand the concept of language. Wasn't till I was six I learned to talk. I've spent my entire childhood being that really weird, awkward kid in class. Luckily, and with much hard work, I've learned to pass as any normal, everyday person. Most of the time.

That sounds incredibly similar to my daughter. She was progressing "normally" until about 2 1/2 when all language development stopped and then regressed. Luckily there are massive amounts of public funding and programs available here in CA (which surprised the hell out of me.) I've never been one to accept publicly funded help, but it was truly a boon when my daughter needed it. She went to group speech therapy twice a week and the other three days a week a therapist would come to our house and play with/instruct my daughter.
As soon as she turned 4 the school district took over, which is around the time I moved us to the suburbs and into a much better district. She went to speech therapy three times a week at a nearby school, and also qualified for pre-k class 5 days a week.
She began kindergarten in a regular class and immediately had problems. Within the first week she had been sent home every day, and I had to go and pick my 5 year old up from the principal's office. Of course she had no concept whatsoever of what was happening, she is incapable of recognizing it right now. After a couple of meetings with school suits it was suggested we medicate her at which point I told the table of 6 to "Go feth Yourselves."
She was observed by a couple of school district psych-types and we had a few more doctor's appointments and that was when they finally diagnosed her on the spectrum and we were able to have her transferred to a special education school which specializes in teaching children on the spectrum.
3:1 kid/teacher ratio, and teachers trained to educate spectrum children. The change in my daughter brings me to tears, her vocabulary has exploded. Her comprehension of complex conversation has exploded. Her attention span has grown, just everything! I can't describe how that feels as a father. I'm so very grateful that she is growing up in a time when ASD is becoming better understood and there's help available, and she isn't just going to be labeled as "the naughty kid" or even "the slow kid."

Lint, that's actually awesome! My mother had to fight tooth and nail to get my sister into a school for special needs...and that only lasted one year. They tried to get her back in the normal school system, but they simply didn't have the staffing to help her; and they live in a really good school district. After six months of battling to keep her in the school designed to teach/help kids with Autism/Asberger's, she finally told them to feth themselves, and started homeschooling her. And like your daughter, there was an almost immediate change!

chaos0xomega wrote:
. Any 'disability' that autistic people may have, I think is more an issue of society not knowing how to 'interact' and communicate properly with autistic people than it is an issue with autists themselves.

With all respect, I think you may have inverted the issue here. I can't play the violin, for example. I'm lucky enough that I/we live in a society where this is not a primary or presumed skill/trait, but I don't blame violinists for my own inability.

 Yodhrin wrote:


Of course, it brings issues as well; people have very specific preconceptions about autism, when you say that word many people without prior personal experience only have two images in their mind - "eccentric super-genius" or "kid that makes weird noises and bangs their head off things when they're upset", they have no concept of a spectrum disorder and the idea that someone can appear superficially "normal" yet still have a form of autism can be difficult to accept, occasionally to the point that they will accuse you of lying. People take the ability to subconsciously "read" other people during conversation, the ability to form a rapport with other people without conscious effort on their part completely for granted. Most find it difficult to grasp that even to approach a level playing field with a neurotypical person, at least in my own case, required years of part-time study of behavioural science and a continual conscious effort during a conversation to analyse gestures, expressions, choice of words, and tone & cadence of speech(as well as attempting to moderate myself in all those respects) in addition to normal aspects of conversing like internalising the content of the other person's speech and formulating my own replies. Even then, it's all too easy to miss a cue that would indicate the other person is bored and is trying to politely extricate themselves, or that I'd failed to express myself properly and either confused or offended them. It also makes it difficult to determine when someone is being deceptive, or the difference between "banter" and someone who is just taking the piss in a malicious way. And of course the more people are involved in a conversation, the more taxing that experience becomes, almost exponentially so since you don't just have to analyse the interactions between yourself and another person, but between yourself and each of the other individuals involved AND the interactions between all of them.

I don't know that it had a particular effect on my getting into wargaming, but I suspect it's the reason I learned to read so quickly when I was young and subsequently developed such a strong preference for science fiction, so perhaps it did in the sense that I was essentially already a "nerd" by the end of my first year in primary school, heh.

This account is particularly interesting. Does having the internal dialogue/perspective of a character in a book represented in text make it more comprehensible? As in, does it facilitate your ability to "socially wonder about others"?

 eohall wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
. Any 'disability' that autistic people may have, I think is more an issue of society not knowing how to 'interact' and communicate properly with autistic people than it is an issue with autists themselves.

With all respect, I think you may have inverted the issue here. I can't play the violin, for example. I'm lucky enough that I/we live in a society where this is not a primary or presumed skill/trait, but I don't blame violinists for my own inability.

 Yodhrin wrote:


Of course, it brings issues as well; people have very specific preconceptions about autism, when you say that word many people without prior personal experience only have two images in their mind - "eccentric super-genius" or "kid that makes weird noises and bangs their head off things when they're upset", they have no concept of a spectrum disorder and the idea that someone can appear superficially "normal" yet still have a form of autism can be difficult to accept, occasionally to the point that they will accuse you of lying. People take the ability to subconsciously "read" other people during conversation, the ability to form a rapport with other people without conscious effort on their part completely for granted. Most find it difficult to grasp that even to approach a level playing field with a neurotypical person, at least in my own case, required years of part-time study of behavioural science and a continual conscious effort during a conversation to analyse gestures, expressions, choice of words, and tone & cadence of speech(as well as attempting to moderate myself in all those respects) in addition to normal aspects of conversing like internalising the content of the other person's speech and formulating my own replies. Even then, it's all too easy to miss a cue that would indicate the other person is bored and is trying to politely extricate themselves, or that I'd failed to express myself properly and either confused or offended them. It also makes it difficult to determine when someone is being deceptive, or the difference between "banter" and someone who is just taking the piss in a malicious way. And of course the more people are involved in a conversation, the more taxing that experience becomes, almost exponentially so since you don't just have to analyse the interactions between yourself and another person, but between yourself and each of the other individuals involved AND the interactions between all of them.

I don't know that it had a particular effect on my getting into wargaming, but I suspect it's the reason I learned to read so quickly when I was young and subsequently developed such a strong preference for science fiction, so perhaps it did in the sense that I was essentially already a "nerd" by the end of my first year in primary school, heh.

This account is particularly interesting. Does having the internal dialogue/perspective of a character in a book represented in text make it more comprehensible? As in, does it facilitate your ability to "socially wonder about others"?

Not really, it's more that each degree that I myself am removed from the context of a narrative, fictional or factual, allows me to devote more mental resources to the narrative itself, rather than analysing the participants in order to try and discern their motivations. As I said, in a conversation in which I'm trying to actively participate I have to try and maintain a constant and conscious effort to catalogue and ascribe meaning to everything that's going on, in addition to moderating my own behaviour to conform with social norms as much as possible; I have to reason out what's going through the other person's mind rather than intuiting it, an example might be two people conversing, one relates an anecdote they consider amusing to the other. If I'm the one relating the anecdote, I have to keep checking for signs the other person is becoming bored while I'm talking, I have to take care to modulate my voice so that I don't just mechanically drone on, or get carried away and end up talking too loudly or being too animated in my gestures. Then I have to observe the reaction; they smiled and laughed, provisionally positive response, how broad was the smile? What was its duration? Did it reach the eyes? Were there any indications of microexpressions that displayed contempt, anger, or disgust? Did the laughter sound natural or did it have the plosive quality which I had previously observed indicated that person was forcing it? Did anything about their posture indicate they were using laughter to mask discomfort or disapproval? I might end up concluding that the provisional assessment was right, they found the anecdote genuinely amusing, so I then have to amend my internal "profile" of that person to note that their sense of humour will accommodate that sort of joke without being offended or bored.

If you take a step back, so that I'm now observing two other people having the same conversation, the analysis is marginally less strenuous and urgent, since I'm not having to monitor and control my own behaviour and mannerisms to the same degree, and there's less personal risk involved; if the anecdote is received poorly or causes offence, I still have to grasp that in order to have a more accurate understanding of the people involved in the conversation, but it won't add an additional layer of complexity in the interactions I have with either of them in future in the same way as if I'd told the anecdote and caused the offence myself.

Take another step back such that I'm watching the same narrative, but in the context of a fictional TV show and it's less taxing still, primarily because it loses all sense of urgency as it's not a "real" scenario which could affect my interactions with others.

When the same scenario is written down, it's the easiest to deal with, since the ambiguity is gone almost completely. There's no need for a mechanistic analysis since the descriptive nature of the text simply tells the reader that the smile is genuine, the laughter is not forced, the two people interacted positively(the obvious exception being when the book is misleading the reader in preparation for a twist, but that's not a troubling possibility because of the fictional context).

I did attempt in the past to try and apply broader "lessons" derived from characters or situations with similarities to a particular interaction or set of circumstances, but people are frustratingly opaque and too individual for it to be useful for me as a strategy; tell the same joke to two very similar people and one might find it hilarious, while the other will never speak to you again, often with no obvious reason why that would be the case. The only system I've found that allows me to "pass" as a "normal" person is careful, measured interaction with extensive real-time analysis. In a handful of cases -close family, a small number of people I've known for many many years- the "profile" of someone becomes so extensive and ingrained that I can just talk to them in the way most people seem to talk to each other, but with most people it's more effort for me to have a simple conversation than it is to do complex equations

Over a hundred votes - thank you all for sharing.
I think the 15% really tells how lots of us are drawn to this hobby.
According to a study in 2009 the average rate in the UK is 1 in 100 (with males making up 1.8% & females 0.2%). See here: http://www.autism.org.uk/working-with/autism-strategy/local-planning/data-collection/prevalence-rates-of-autism-in-adults.aspx
So if we assume that the majority of the voters were male (I think it's a pretty safe assumption!!) then this is a 7.5 times the UK national rate for adults.
I find this very interesting. I may point this out to the Autism Research Centre in the UK (if no-one minds - I would just be giving numbers & not any names of the posters or indicate where the vote came from).

Thanks again everyone for sharing what is some pretty private stuff.

Newer statistics show autism is now at 1 in 65. I'll have to double check.

My wife works with a varying degree of children across a series of different mediums; internet-tutoring, face-to-face tutoring, and when she was a full-time teacher, she had worked with several autistic children. She's very good at explaining to me what sort of different programs she utilized when working with her students and how varied and wide spectrum they needed to be in order for them to work for each child. It was mind blowing to see the myriad of different teaching tools that had to be employed just on a per-child basis. I really had no idea and I can safely say up until recently I was one of those folks that just lumped everyone together when the word autism was used.

Even if you don't consider yourself brave, or great at social situations, coming onto a public forum and discussing these issues is remarkably impressive and no small feat.

Are there different tests depending on what you're looking for in the spectrum? Or does a specialist choose several as sort of a broad sweep?

Having Autism seems like an advantage to me. Who wouldn't want a 160 IQ?

I work in a special residential school for boys on the autistic spectrum and can concur that wargaming, ccgs and rpgs really help in many ways with the boys I work with.

We regularly go out to club nights and competitions and this has helped a lot of the boys learn how to socialise better, the statistical basis of a lot of ccgs is a big attractor for them.

With a few of the boys with Asperger syndrome the game has become their specialty and helps give them a focus.

@poppa G: IQ of 160 isn't much use if you can't actually understand and function in the social world around you which is the biggest frustration for a lot of our older boys