Chess, Autism and Me

Don't get me wrong now but am not trying to ride the wave of google keyword search and increase this blog's million visitors a day into billions, wishing does help GM Patrick Wolff said in his book Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess.

Let me get this thing straight and direct. My line of work or should I say my field is in the academe, special education to be exact. I am a graduate of B.S. in Occupational Therapy and furthered on with MA in Special Education and some more professional advancements which never really helped in translating all these hardwork into good money! Hahahah!

Anyways, I chose and lovingly did so to be in this field because I grew up and still have a brother with autism. He now is 23 years old and is integrated very well in the neighborhood where he lives with out parents.

I took up chess again around 2003 after buying a discounted classic book about Philippine chess in National Bookstore Alabang Town Center. From there, my addiction has never let go of me. Now you can ask me now, should I write this post about chess, autism and me?

What can we find in the cyberspace when we do a search with those words except the last one? Let's try...

Chess and autism, google found 368,000 links in 0.27 seconds. That's big in anyways you'd look at it.

1.Transformation of Chess Improvement Blog had a post entitled Mark of a Genius, Memory, Chess and Autism.

2. Life's Biggest Loser

3. Chess Expert Wins Scholarship

Some more from the google search result but this next two is something that would definitely bring the huh' and ahh' in you:

Magnus Carlsen, a chess prodigy and Mark Week's Chess and Autism.

Let me lay the basics of the condition.

Autism has three major deficits lives to put it simply, these are impairment in social skills, impairment in communication and impairment in cognition or how one thinks.

Those three major life areas can still be subdivided into finer and more specific skill functioning and I'll have to list them next:

• Impaired reciprocal social interaction - Examples include the following:
  
  
  • Poor use of body language and nonverbal communication, such as eye contact, facial expressions, and gestures
    
    
  • Lack of awareness of feelings of others and the expression of emotions, such as pleasure (laughing) or distress (crying), for reasons not apparent to others
    
    
  • Remaining aloof, preferring to be alone
    
    
  • Difficulty interacting with other people and failure to make peer friendships
    
    
  • May not want to cuddle or be cuddled
    
    
  • Lack of or abnormal social play
    
    
  • Not responding to verbal cues (acting as if deaf)
    
    
• Impaired communication - Examples include the following:
  
  
  • Delay in, or the total lack of, the development of spoken language or speech
    
    
  • If speech is developed, it is abnormal in content and quality.
    
    
  • Difficulty expressing needs and wants, verbally and/or nonverbally
    
    
  • Repeating words or phrases back when spoken to (known as echolalia)
    
    
  • Inability to initiate or sustain conversation
    
    
  • Absent or poorly developed imaginary play
    
  
  
• Restricted repertoire of interests, behaviors, and activities - Examples include the following:
  
  
  • Insisting on following routines and sameness, resisting change
    
    
  • Ritualistic or compulsive behaviors
    
    
  • Sustained odd play
    
    
  • Repetitive body movements (hand flapping, rocking) and/or abnormal posture (toe walking)
    
    
  • Preoccupation with parts of objects or a fascination with repetitive movement (spinning wheels, turning on and off lights)
    
    
  • Narrow, restricted interests (dates/calendars, numbers, weather, movie credits)

Are you reminded by someone you saw in one of the tournaments you've recently played in? Is that someone manifesting some of these characteristics?

Now don't jump right into conclusion and say he is a person with autism. No please don't! It's is important that we inform the guy about the possibility of him or her having the condition but are you ready to receive a well-meaning, as in well-meaning swing from him ala Pacman that could send you down on the floor?

In most of the seminars and college classes I've talked and taught with, one hundred percent of the time, my students would always say, "Ahhh, Sir don't you think this guy is an autistic?" or "Sir, I feel like DSM IV-R is describing me?"

Also, in the Philippines, the word autistic has become the word to describe the condition instead of the correct term autism or child or person with autism. It's just being Filipino and our way of (mis) handling certain words.

One thing is for sure, in our chess kingdom you do not have the condition if you can focus and concentrate for more than 2 hours on a given chess position. In fact it is one of the gifts a chess player can have while living in the kingdom. Second, you are most probably used to being called weird or praning by your non-chess playing friends each time you blurt out the winning move which you missed moments ago while playing with your other chess playing friend.

Ok c'mon now, do you think it's the crazy curse of the game that makes us chess addicts be glued on hours end just to get that hard earned win? Or are we just lucky and blessed enough to appreciate the beauty of the game which has caused other souls and minds to cross between the worlds of the sane, not so sane and the insane?

As for my bro, he doesn't care at all about the game. He loves to socialize and in fact he knows more people in the village than anyone else.

Hmmm! Memory, chess and autism? I've got to go now before I essay another one on the topic.