Making Meaningful Worlds: Role-Playing Subcultures and the Autism Spectrum [peer-reviewed article]

Fein, Elizabeth. « Making Meaningful Worlds: Role-Playing Subcultures and the Autism Spectrum ». Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 39, no 2 (27 mars 2015), 299-321. doi:10.1007/s11013-015-9443-x.  

The author studied a summer camp for youth on the autism spectrum. The camp is based on RPG because the founder discovered participants were attracted to them. The structure of the community, the stories in game and the relational commitments between participants are bringing positive outcomes.

However, it seems the dynamic of role-playing games themselves is especially positive. Indeed, the autists are confortable in the camp because the social informations exchanged are explicit, top-down and systematic. They follow a set of shared abstract rules. Interpreting the implicit social informations of daily life is difficult for a person on the autism spectrum.

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Informations added on the Wikipedia page Sociological and cultural aspects of autism