A video game designer has come up with a way for people to better understand the challenges autistic individuals face in everyday life. Vancouver, British Columbia based Taylan Kadayifcioglu, who goes by Taylan Kay, and two others created a game to showcase what living with hypersensitivity is like. Hypersensitivity is a common symptom for those diagnosed with autism.
Taylan Kay and the others members of the team created the "Auti-Sim," as they call it, in 12 hours during the Vancouver Hacking Health Hackathon. This event was created to help technology experts and medical professionals come together and to find tech-based solutions for medical problems. The game can be found online here.
When playing the game, users wander around a playground. When they approach others, their voices being clashing and become shrill. The other's faces distort, and only by retreating to a more secluded area will the game reverse itself.
Kay, in an interview with ABC News, said he was inspired by a film he saw about autistic children, and by talking to his wife, who is a social worker.
"Their brains can't keep up with data...The (filmmaker's) metaphor was that their brains would eventually crash like a computer."
This lead to Kay formulating the game as a teaching tools for those looking to understand how people with hypersensitivity view the world.
"You need to understand why people are doing what they're doing," said Max Wiznitzer, pediatric neurologist at the University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, who has not played the game. "Here's what I tell my parents (of patients with autism): You need to be an informed consumer. You need to understand which is kiddie behavior and what is (autistic) behavior.
This is certainly an exciting and thought provoking simulation that is a excellent tool for helping children, as well as adult, understand how autistic people see the world.
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