Naughty Auties on Second Life

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(CNN) -- Walk into Naughty Auties, a virtual resource center for those with autism, and you'll find palm trees swaying against a striking ocean sunset. Were it not for the pixelated graphics on the computer screen in front of you, you would swear you were looking at a tropical hideaway.1 of 3
David Savill, 22, lives in Gloucester, England, in real life and created this spot within the virtual world of Second Life. Residents of this digital realm can represent themselves with 3-D images called avatars and connect with each other over the Internet.
Savill has Asperger's syndrome and said he wanted Naughty Auties to serve those with autism spectrum disorders and their friends and family.
Savill, who represents himself in the virtual world using an avatar named Dave Sparrow, said one benefit is that visitors can practice social interaction and find information about the condition. The graphical representations of real people create a "comfort zone" that can coax users out of their shells and get them communicating with others, he said.
"You're on your own computer, in your own room, your own space," Savill said.
"So you're not going out into the real world meeting people, you're going meeting people online and in your own home, so you're perfectly relaxed. It's just a fantastic tool to use to bring people togetherAutism, more precisely the autism spectrum, is a range of brain disorders that can cause difficulties in social interaction, communication and behavior. Asperger's syndrome is at the milder end of this spectrum. People with Asperger's are often high-achieving but can have difficulty in social situations.

CNN learned about Savill's Second Life place from an iReporter in England who has named herself Janey Bracken in Second Life. Bracken, who prefers not to share her real name, submitted stories to iReport.com describing Savill's resource center and providing information about other places where those with the condition can turn.

"[Savill] said that his life changed when his family decided to get the Internet," Bracken wrote. "He was able to use chat rooms and soon realized that people used symbols to express themselves: the smiley signs, the angry signs, hug signs, etc., to enhance the text. He went on to say that subconsciously his brain was learning about communication from these sessions of chat."

Second Life has its own economy and social scene, and Bracken and Savill hope it could become a haven for those seeking help for autism.
While many think such computer interactions could eventually be helpful in treating autism, scientists say more information is needed to truly assess their value. Dr. Fred Volkmar, a professor in Yale University's Child Study Center, said he would want more concrete studies done before he could be sure.

"Although not much research is yet available, there is clearly considerable potential in use of new technologies for fostering social skills," Volkmar said.
To answer this need, scientists are beginning to explore the possibilities in Second Life. One such researcher is Simon Bignell, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Derby in Derby, England, who is running a project that is evaluating teaching and research in Second Life.
Bignell, known in-world as Milton Broome, said Second Life is an uncharted but promising area for new applied psychological research. Virtual reality can be used to simulate new environments for people on the autistic spectrum, he said.
"
For people with autism, we've found it's a very nice way of setting up situations they might come across in their everyday lives," Bignell said. "For people who have social, emotional, communicational problems ... we can get them familiar with an environment before they actually try it out in real life."

He started the "Autism Research" discussion group within Second Life to serve as an information-sharing tool for interested parties. He also has an office within Second Life and can sometimes be found working in SL-Labs, the university's in-world psychology lab space. The lab areas contain meeting spots, informational kiosks and games. A portion of these areas contain information about autism and Asperger's.
Savill said Second Life excels at minimizing geographical separations between people and bringing people from all over the world to meet together quickly and easily.

He added that he wanted to emphasize that virtual worlds are an emerging and important tool not just for autistic people, but for the people who know them.
"It's not just to help people with autism, it's to help people whose lives have been affected by autism, be they family or friends or employees of people who have autism," Savill said. "Naughty Auties is a fantastic meeting place for people

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditio ... index.html

That is an amazing article. Thanks very much for posting it.

What put me onto the value of Online/virtual reality /MMORPGs was Nick Yee's site "The Daedalus Project/Gateway" , in which he presents findings in/from his 4 year study of MMORPGs, and personal accounts from thousnds of people of their "lives online". Very interesting, about how liberating and useful the online environment can be for people, especially those having trouble offline.
Also I appreciate how he debunks a lot of the prejudices people have about these online games/worlds etc.

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus

It's fun reading.

Thanks again for post. After a few weeks of thinking about it we're going to buy a second computer today so we can respect each others online projects rather more, and are planning to get one with a graphics card and memory which will allow me to get onto Second Life; till now my attempts have been like very bad dreams; can't walk properly, everything misty, etc!

Amongst other things that Yee found on looking at Second Life was that people respect the same body space boundaries with their avatars for instance as in real life; that online socialising has the same rules, but without the pressure, as offline life. Useful training in other words.

Based on my own social self-observation in SL, I can say that I have experienced a dramatic decrease in the number of people who initiate interraction with me inworld since I joined some of the Autism/AS groups in SL. The groups I'm in are visible in my profile. People see the profile and assume I'm Autistic. Just trying to say that if Aspies still feel isolated in SL, its mostly not due to social skill deficits IMO. All we can do is keep our Autism a secret or go to a place like "Naughty Auties" or the ALF, which whenever I go to, no-one else is there. They're completely empty during the night times in my timezone


Oh yeah, and Milton Broome used to be in the inworld Autism Speaks group.

That's what I've found after two days too. The place is dead. It's less interesting than Runescape. Masses of great , well relatively, landscapes, but almost no people. They should introduce "feature" characters so that places seem a bit more populated/lively, like in RS.
have crowds in the streets etc.

All for naught on the first life topic

Why are the Auties naughty?

Because it rhymes with 'Autie' and evidently they liked the alliteration.
Inflected Form(s): naugh·ti·er; naugh·ti·est
Etymology: Middle English noughti, from nought
Date: 14th century
1: guilty of disobedience or misbehavior
2: lacking in taste or propriety

from 'naught'


n 1: a quantity of no importance; "it looked like nothing I had
ever seen before"; "reduced to nil all the work we had
done"; "we racked up a pathetic goose egg"; "it was all
for naught"; "I didn't hear zilch about it" [syn: nothing,
nil, nix, nada, null, aught, cipher, cypher,
goose egg, zero, zilch, zip]
2: complete failure; "all my efforts led to naught"

That's not alliteration, it's assonance. And I agree with sartresue, the name is nonsensical and carries a negative connotation.

i think you will find the name does make sence, i chose naughty auties because A) it ryhmes and B) people being autistic can very often and very innocently find themselves in bizzar situations (i know myself ive had a couple of innocent situations where the police got involved because of Neurotypical minds not realising how my mind works) hence us Autistic being Naughty, and C) it just sounds fun, which is what naughty auties is, a bit of fun, because when people try to advertise help for autism 9 times out of 10 youll find they always show pictures of children rocking or "worst case scenarios" never the colourful fun amazing side of autism, which is what naughty auties focuses on.......

.......also as to the place being empty, i know there isnt anyone there 24/7 which i apologise about, please bare with me as it is still quite new, i am getting more members everyday, also am in the middle of designing a website for members to keep in contact easily with a blog site so hopefully it might make things easyer for members, just so you know there are meetings every Sunday at Naughty Auties at 12:00 (SLTime) which is 8:00pm (UKTime) i hope that helps a little.....

anyway if anyone has any questions or ideas please feel free to email me as i do need all the help i can get for Naughty Auties to be a success in helping people, as im autistic myself and have a full time job (which i am just about holding) so am finding it quite difficult,

Kindest Regards

Dave

I find your opinion all hoity toity

1.Pretentiously self-important; pompous.
2.Given to frivolity or silliness.

Because I applaud any one that is manipulated and prodded and pushed as much as autistic people are to be
naughty
1.guilty of disobedience or misbehavior
2: lacking in taste or propriety

go, naughty auties!

I joined second life, only to find out, my video card isn't good enough...



I would soooo like to join this lark.

If anyone knows how to get around that problem, let me know.
At the moment, I can't afford a new video card, and I think you also need a lot of space on your mainboard.
I'm not very computer savvy, so apologies for the awkward description.

You could always try the "Onrez" viewer (alternative Second Life software) if you meet the specifications.
Download it here if you do: http://viewer.onrez.com/