Plasma Cortisol Response to Asked Questions on Recent Eventsduring Videogame Playin Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

One of the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is the need for consistency, repetition, rituals, and rigid patterns of play. The need for sameness may be extended to include videogame play and interaction with others.Unfamiliar social interactions and disruption of repetitive patterns of interests and behavior may easily exacerbate anxiety-related stress in individuals with ASD. Whereas, videogame can induce distraction of stress response. We examined the effects of videogame play on cortisol social under the situations of asked questions on daily events plasma.We conducted astructuredinterview consisting of the declarative memory recallon daily events during videogame.Before the start of the interviews, each participant played a videogame as the default context. Two serial contexts followed in which participants were exposed to different social stimuli. Twotypes of stimulators such as an unfamiliar female and an unfamiliar male asked the participants questions on unpleasant daily events, respectively. Immediately after these interviews, the participants were permitted to resume the video game play.A blood specimen for plasma cortisol determination were conducted twice: once at the time of 28 days before and again 5 minutes after the interviews.There were no significant differences in plasma cortisol levels between before and after the interview questions in the 10 children with ASD and the 7 normal healthy controls. Disruption of videogame play, asked questions conducted by the unfamiliar adults, and memory retrieval for the unpleasant daily life events may be able to increase plasma cortisol levels. However, plasma cortisol levels in the 10 children with ASD were not significantly increase plasma cortisol response. Considering that video playing has been found toinduce distraction or decrease and no stress response, video game play candistract cortisol response to stressors.