Missing Lobe Shift as Gamist Tell

[M. J. Young]

I don't know that I can add much after Markus' excellent post, but I think I do understand something of where Jason is pointed.

In a great deal of gamist play, the players are already in an analytical mode. We are working probabilities, not necessarily from specific numbers but on an abstracted level, deciding how likely it is for us to succeed at any given choice. Thus when we shift to doing math, we're already in an analytical mode.

My difficulty is that I don't see the problem in myself or in my players. Those who are good at math usually continue to be so regardless of play style. I can add a column of two-digit numbers in my head as long as I'm not trying to hold a conversation at the same time (in which case paper works just fine). So I'm with Eero on this, I think--are there really people for whom this is a problem?

--M. J. Young

[Jason Lee]

Claire,

I'd like to clarify that I wasn't directly adressing your original point, but adding on something related.  What I was trying to say is partly covered by your above summary, but I was trying to say a bit more.  I wasn't just saying that gamist players are motivated by emotion to seek social rewards, but that they're motivated by emotion to seek all sorts of rewards.  That they step up to challenge at least in part because they're emotionally invested in the outcome/winning/doing something cool.  I'd argue that the pay off in gamist play is more emotional than rational.  It's the fist pumping, yay! moment.  The throwing yourself on the couch, sobbing and thumping pillows in despair as a beautiful plan fails on a bad roll (or maybe that's just me?).  All of that seems an emotional pay off rather than a rational one.  But I may be wrong in my understanding of gamist play.  I very rarely do it myself, spend the first part of the session bitching about how much I hate it, then finally get into it and have a great time, so I suspect my perspective is rather warped.

Cool, and I agree.

• Identification with character (empathy) is necessary to engage  (engage - not just witness) in Premise.

That's a bit more uncertain.  But I can't think of a clever way of establishing it.  Perhaps you could prime people to have low or high empathy before a role-playing incident and then see if they engage in Premise more?

It is definitely more uncertain.  The question is, can a player be interested in a theme without identifying with the characters that create it? If you cannot empathize with the emotions of those involved in a story, can you actually appreciate the story?  If you can't identify with the characters, then the story won't mean anything to you.  Maybe you could appreciate it on a purely aesthetic level, but I wouldn't call that engaged.  In this context I'm using empathize as synonymous with understand - implying that you must be able to feel an emotion to understand it.  With empathize I also mean thinking about how someone else would feel (technically, probably how you would feel in a specific situation if your background was like the character's, but I think that's a side issue).  This is one of those 'this is how Jason thinks stories as supposed to work' things.  It makes sense to me, but I'm not against challenging it.

• Therefore, Nar (engaging in Premise) is using a distinct mode of thought from whatever cognitive method allows one to do math.
• Therefore, the slow down I'm seeing seems to occur with something other than functional Nar.  That's Gamism and disconnect from play in my point of view, those who believe in Sim may have another view.

I think you're on much shakier ground here.  You risk circularity.

- I suck at maths during Nar play.
- Maths is a different cognitive process from empathy.
- Nar play involes empathy.
- I suck at maths during Nar play.
- I don't suck at maths during Gam play.[/list:u]

I'm not suggesting that's what you're saying.  I think you need to clarify your argument further so that it doesnt' run the risk of appearing like this.

Actually, I don't think I'm saying anything too different.  Though, if you take into account that I might not have the slow down for reasons other than Gamism and I don't even suck at math all the time in Nar play, the circle kinda crumbles.

I think that this is a brilliant question.  And potentially one where we could get some actual answers.

I mean, it would be feasible to get people to set an alarm to go off during their next session, when it goes off, they all do 10 maths problems and time themselves.  It could happen a number of times in long sessions.  Then they mark their times with what CA they think they're using (ok, so it's a crude measure, but it would be ok for a first run, and until some other measure of CA becomes available).  We collate data and compare.

That might let us know if your observation is a general phenomena, and then we can move on to work out why on earth it happens.

Now I'm excited about this idea.  :-)[/i]

Once the initial gear grinding passes (a second or two), all math thrusters are on full until numbers stop being important.  So in my case, the first problem would be the only one that mattered.  For the last four weeks of playing I think the group has made three rolls, so my data points are drifting off into memory.  I suspect this Monday will be different.  I'm going to keep a sharp eye open next time we play, and see if I can make more sense of this.

[Jason Lee]

Eero,

• Identification with character (empathy) is necessary to engage  (engage - not just witness) in Premise.

This I don't buy. I'm primarily narrativist, but don't deem empathy a very important quality for my kind of nar - in fact I tend to think of empathy as a sim quality.

Consider: I routinely play narrativism biased games - the latest being MLwM, which I've played quite a bit in the last month. For me nar is about manipulation of story objects. Good nar is where the players recognize the issues at hand, distill them in artistic form and deliver them with power. If there's empathy there, it's not a necessary quality for the act itself. It's certainly possible that my empathy is triggered without me knowing about it, but that'd depend on your exact definition of empathy - I don't see it.

A sim player has, or might have, empathy for the characters in the game. He might even immerse there. The narrativist is more interested in the choices those characters represent - no need for empathy there. I myself need marrativism an analytic and creative act, not an emotional one.

I covered this in my response to Claire, where I tried to define what I meant by 'empathize'.  My opinion is that sterile Nar play is either Nar play that's missing something or something other than Nar play.  I'm going to have to seriously think about whether Nar and Pawn stance are compatible.  My gut reaction is no, though I have seen it before (in which case I tend to call it poor craftsmanship).  That definitely seems like a value judgement, maybe it is.  But now I'm wandering, and I'm not even sure if that's what you meant.

• Therefore, the slow down I'm seeing seems to occur with something other than functional Nar.  That's Gamism and disconnect from play in my point of view, those who believe in Sim may have another view.

Assumes that the psychological features you've recognized - calculation and empathy, to be precise, are primarily connected to certain CAs. As I noted before, I would deem such connections specific cases, each to be considered without bias from others. Some psych feature might have something to do with a CA, while some might not. Here you assume that it has to be this way.

It's really the same case as with the techniques of the game, just from the other side of the equation. The CAs are empirical social designations, and therefore it's pure chance if a given technique or psychological trait will match tidily with a CA. Your example just proves this. Some of us play nar with empathy and (I presume) a bit of immersion, while for some it's pure pawn stance and enjoyment from the story qualities, not the characters.

[snip]

The general answer is not connected to the CAs at least, IMO. It'd probably be more fruitful to consider whether some techniques of play are connected. It'd seem to me that certain ways of playing, like character immersion, are much more fixed psych-wise than the agendas are. You have to feel the character to play immersion, and you cannot feel it if you play rules-lawyer, as examples.

I'm generally in agreement, but I'd like to differ in that I think there are definite trends with CA's.  In my experience, Immersion (the identifying with character definition) occurs significantly more often in Nar, and Pawn stance occurs significantly more often in Gam.  If we, for example, blame Immersion for the slow down, we can say that's it's possible that when the slow down does not occur Immersion is not happening.  

I don't expect, or want, absolutes here - I'm just looking for likely patterns.

[Jason Lee]

Markus,

Ok, going from a doctoral thesis (in German) published in August 2003, written by a good friend, on developmental psychology aspects of dyscalculia.
It seems fairly safe to say, that the range of processes we're talking about here is pretty basic and as such unlikely to warrant a devoted kognitive subsystem/module (we might argue about a module for the representation of numbers and sets, but we're primarily concerned with the processes of addition, substraction, comparison etc. here, right?).
Now, IMO the biggest factors in that performance (at this low level, just above subitizing) will be attention and working memory (The Baddeley & Hitch approach with it's quite capable "Central Executive" can handle almost all small scale stuff), precisely because the process is so simple (so that actual algebraic processing power doesn't enter into the equation).
Working from that, I'd offer the following possible explanations for inability to add three single digit numbers:

- loss of attention: especially in long term task of attention people have lapses, more of them if the task is particularly boring
- interference/dual task: you're occupied with something else and don't divert sufficient resorces to the dice
- sequencing problems: sequencing presumable plays a major role in arithmetics. Mixing Baddeley & Hitch's phonological loop with the within-between stream stuff from Jones & Macken it has been found that irrelevant and variable noise (people talking) impairs memory processes based on rehearsal. It unlikely though possible, that listening to the others talk make yous you mix up or forget the numbers.

I don't think any of these are the case.  The sequencing problem is interesting, though I don't think I quite understand what you mean.

- the central executive (according to Baddeley & Logie) among other things relevant to mental arithmetic is also supposed to retrive results for well known problems from long term memory (everything below 20 is usually assumed to be "well known"), so the problem might again be, that you're focussed elsewhere and can't access the result directly, as you'd usually do, and then stumble when having to rely on a mechanical, conscious application of the addition procedure.

I can say, with as much certainty as I ever can about anything my brain is actually doing, that I'm trying to remember what the math is. ("4 + 3 is... ummm... 7")  There is also the possibility that collecting the numbers is playing a role in the issue, as for us that involves converting them from dots.

Finally, yes, emotions can get in the way of almost anything (would be interesting to hook you up to an EKG ;) but IMHO you are just devoting ressources to unevenly, (if you have problems with switsching tasks in general, field dependece (Witkin) might be relevant as well) and have trouble re-focussing on the new task. I find it hard to believe that your emotional engagement is so incredibly intense that you can no longer do basic calculus.

That connects to what Rob was saying about frustration causing him to fail at math, and other people I've spoken to mention pressure and stress.  I also think you're right that my emotional engagement can't be so intense that it keeps me from doing basic math.  If we accept that it's an uneven division of resources, which definitely seems to make sense, isn't that pretty much where we started?  Just without knowing where the resources are going.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the issue I'm seeing is getting larger as this thread progresses.  What I'm seeing/experiencing is only a second or two of lost thought.  Long enough to say, "Ummm... hold on, Ummm.... Uhhhh..."  A moment of trying to get your brain to add when it just doesn't want to.  It isn't a huge thing, but it is apparent enough that I, and others, notice it.

I briefly read up on field dependence/field independence.  I've been accused of being easily bothered by sensory stimuli before (I have fairly acute senses).  The girl says I'm oversensitive.  I say it helps me spot lions so she doesn't get eaten.  I don't think she's impressed.  This is illustrated by the fact that it took me quite a bit longer than it should have to take an exam yesterday because the guy sitting next to me smelled bad.  I don't think it messed up my answers, but it definitely slowed me down.  I also tend to do a fair amount of holistic reasoning.  However, I don't suffer from faulty analytical reasoning, I learn easier with self motivation, and I don't have trouble re-tasking or multi-tasking.  So, given my limited understanding of the concept, it doesn't seem to fit.  

Hmmm... too much talking about myself.  The other people in my group who experience the problem don't share my thinking patterns.

Here's a breakdown of my group, which is where my data comes from:

Me
Agenda: Nar
Most common stance:  Author, some Director
Slowdown:  Occasional to often.  Doesn't seem to happen when bored.

Player 2
Agenda: Nar
Most common stance:  Author
Slowdown:  More often than me.  Doesn't seem to happen when bored.  She thinks it has to do with immersion.

Player 3
Agenda: Difficult to classify - mostly Nar, some Gam undercurrents.  Seems to vary with character being played and mood.
Most common stance:  Author (?) and Pawn (?), again sort of hard to classify.  Seems to enjoy Director.
Slowdown:  Less often than me.  Seems to occur more often with certain characters.  He has no idea why it happens.

Player 4
Agenda: Nar
Most common stance:  Actor
Slowdown:  Doesn't experience.  However, it's worth mentioning that resolution for this player is a painfully slow process to begin with - not because of the math, but because of lack of attentiveness and need for hand-holding. ("What's going on?  Can I do this?  What do I roll?  I don't remember what my skill is.  I need to look it up.  Where's my notebook?  Where did my dice go?  *shakes dice for a really long time* I forgot what my skill was." ... and so on.)

Player 5
Agenda: Also difficulty to classify.  Strong Gamist underpinning, Nar trappings.
Most common stance:  Pawn and Actor, seems to be a fairly even split.
Slowdown:  Doesn't experience.

Player 6
Agenda:  Gam, slight peekings of Nar.
Most common stance:  Mostly Pawn, some Actor
Slowdown:  Doesn't experience.

Hopefully, I haven't misrepresented anyone.  You can kind of see where I got this idea from, as the three people in my group who don't have the issue are rather Gam, except the guy who isn't paying attention.  My memory of play sessions with other people backs this up, but I'm really disinclined to trust my memory past a few months - it could be lying to me.

As I mentioned to Claire, I predict a decent amount of rolling this Monday, so I'll keep my eyes open for the things you've mentioned.

[Jason Lee]

M.J.,

I don't know that I can add much after Markus' excellent post, but I think I do understand something of where Jason is pointed.

In a great deal of gamist play, the players are already in an analytical mode. We are working probabilities, not necessarily from specific numbers but on an abstracted level, deciding how likely it is for us to succeed at any given choice. Thus when we shift to doing math, we're already in an analytical mode.

That's pretty much it.

My difficulty is that I don't see the problem in myself or in my players. Those who are good at math usually continue to be so regardless of play style. I can add a column of two-digit numbers in my head as long as I'm not trying to hold a conversation at the same time (in which case paper works just fine). So I'm with Eero on this, I think--are there really people for whom this is a problem?

Yeah, half my group experiences it from time to time.  It isn't a huge problem though, just a noticable one.  My most recent response to Markus goes over this.  (Maybe I should have just written one really big response, instead of trying to split it into four pieces.  Oh well.)

[Rob Carriere]

For whatever introspection is worth, what I mentioned about my experience feels like insufficient diversion of resources with? because of? a desire to stick with the original task. And, as with cruciel, it's only a second or two, but it can go pretty fundamental. I've looked at Mage die rolls and gone, `err, some of these are higher than 6...I know the numbers higher than 6, they are...errr', and then you can feel some change of mental state occuring and the answer pops up.

SR
--

[Jason Lee]

Ok, you guys have made my initial hypothesis pretty weak, but I think I just completely destroyed it last night in gaming.

Before game I had a chance to ask Player 6 (Gam) if he experiences the 'math stutter' (as he calls it).  His immediate reaction was 'Yeah, I hate that!'  He's just asymptomatic, so I never noticed.  We talked about it for a little bit, and he thinks it tends to happen more when he's tired, but that isn't the only time.  He isolated it as a failure of memory, just as I did, and I explained the concept of the Central Executive that Markus spoke of - he though that was dead on.  Oh, and Player 4 fessed up to having it, though he blamed me for jinxing him by bringing it up :).  So that's all of us except Player 5, who I haven't really spoke to about it.

Player 6 has been having this desire to take statistics on dice rolls in our game, so we joined forces and collected data for the evening.

We had four slowdowns - two of player 2's seven rolls, and two of player 4's eight rolls.  They all occurred in the same conflict, at the beginning of the session.  Player 2 mentioned a decent amount of engagement at that point, and less later in the evening.

No one else had a slowdown that I noticed or they mentioned.  I made six rolls, Player 3 made two, Player 5 (GM) made two, and Player 6 made one.

So, I didn't end up see a connection to agenda or stance, and it definitely seems to be a failure of memory, as Markus mentioned (thanks!).

My new hypothesis is just that it's visualizing the events that keep your mental resources away from the central executive.  Though, I might even be stretching there, as it may simply be the process of switching tasks that consumes resources.