Asperger Syndrome is NOT Caused by Gaming

Speaking to SPOnG, Dr John Charlton, a psychologist from the University of Bolton, has clarified that gaming does not cause Asperger Syndrome. Dr Charlton pointed out that some media outlets have been misinterpreting his research into video game addiction, which noted that some addicted gamers exhibit characteristics similar to those of people with Asperger Syndrome.

“In no way can it be said that Asperger's can be caused by game playing (Asperger's is thought to have a biological basis)”, SPOnG was told.

He told us that he wished this to be clarified because, "despite my best efforts in interviews last week, some of the press reports I have read and perhaps some of the reports that have started to appear on the internet seem to be factually incorrect."

“The point about Asperger's was just that the relationships between addiction and the personality characteristics that we examined suggested that MMORPGs MIGHT be particularly addictive to people with Asperger's given the properties of both this type of game and the psychological characteristics of people with Asperger's... We are not saying that all people who might be classifiable as addicts have Asperger's”, he went on.

Dr Charlton also told us that MMORPGs encourage higher-than-average levels of addiction for some, stating, “Yes. It is likely that the number of people addicted will vary depending upon the type of game considered, and that MMORPG's will have enhanced addictive potential for certain people (e.g. those with the personality characteristics that our study looked at), and that this will have influenced the results we reported.”

Getting to the specifics, Dr Charlton said, "our study showed that 3% of our sample showed signs of addiction (this is lower than some other studies because we used a more stringent index of addiction than some other studies; the main focus of our work is to distinguish addiction from non-problematic high engagement, a distinction that some previous researchers have not made)."

SPOnG was told that, while Asheron's Call is now somewhat dated, Dr Charlton still believes the research to be relevant. “All the participants were players of Asheron's Call. We realise that this game is not as popular as it once was: we collected the data in 2003 but have only just got around to working on the personality part of the data set that we collected. However, we consider that the work is still relevant given the large number of players of other MMORPG that there currently are.”

“We didn't target people with Asperger's in our data collection (we collected data from Asheron's call players in general)”, he continued.

Further clarifying the scope of the findings, Dr Charlton said, “It would be necessary to conduct specific studies to test whether people with Asperger's syndrome are over-represented in the population of MMORPG players and whether they are more likely to be classifiable as addicted than other players.”

He also reiterated what SPOnG told you on Friday – that none of those studied were classified during the research as having Asperger's. You can see SPOnG's earlier coverage here.