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Violent video games don’t affect adults with autism any differently than other adults and don’t appear to be linked with an increase in aggression, according to a forthcoming study.

Following the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, there was speculation about a link between autism spectrum disorder and violence and—in particular—that violent video games could cause gamers with autism to act violently.

“If violent video games caused adults with autism spectrum disorder to behave aggressively, we should have seen some evidence of this in our study, but we did not,” says lead author Christopher Engelhardt, a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Health Professions at University of Missouri.

Blast your opponent?

“There are some caveats to our findings,” Engelhardt says. “For example, we only exposed participants to violent or nonviolent games for 15 minutes before measuring their willingness to behave aggressively. This study, therefore, cannot speak to the potential long-term effects of violent-video-game exposure.”

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After playing one of two video games that differed only in the amount of violence present in the game, participants engaged in a task to measure aggression.

In that task, participants were led to believe they were competing against another person in a trial to test their reaction times. If the participant won the trial, he or she could “blast” their opponent with a loud noise. The length and volume of that noise were determined by the participant, which allowed the researchers to measure aggression levels in the participants.

More than 100 adults between the ages of 17 and 25, half with autism spectrum disorder and half typically developing, participated in the study.

The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Psychological Science.

Source: University of Missouri