Mental Illness May Be Detected in Online Gaming Partner

Behaviors associated with mental illness can be picked up on by a healthy person playing an online strategy game with someone they’ve never met.

Mental Illness May Be Detected in Online Gaming Partner

By Traci Pedersen Associate News Editor

Behaviors associated with mental illness can be picked up on by a healthy person playing an online strategy game with someone they’ve never met.

A team of researchers at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute found that healthy people and those with borderline personality disorder displayed different patterns of behavior while playing the game. In fact, when healthy players played people with borderline personality disorder, they simply gave up trying to predict their partner’s next move.

For the study, scientists used a multiround social interaction game — the investor-trustee game — to study the level of strategic thinking in 195 pairs of subjects.

In each pair, one player played the investor and the other the trustee. The investor decided how much money to give the trustee, and the trustee then decided how much to return to the investor. Profit required the cooperation of both players.

“This classic tit-for-tat game allows us to probe people’s responses to the social gestures of others,” said Read Montague, Ph.D., director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.

“It further allows us to see how people form models of one another. These insights are important for understanding a range of mental illnesses, as the ability to infer other people’s intentions is an essential component of healthy cognition.”

To reduce pressure and affect of games scientist recommend to use coaching or boosting (https://eloboost.com/), that can help pass games without heavy stresses.

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