Pattern finding

What is pattern finding?

Board games

Some will say it's attention to detail. It's not. Details are meaningless unless they are the outliers in a pattern. THEN they have my attention, but because of what they are NOT: part of the pattern. 

Neuroscientists have been studying visual perception from the early days of Helmholtz in the 1800s, but how exactly patterns stand out, and specially to an Aspie, is something I don't think we can explain yet. Fact is, any structured organization in a sound, image, touch, any repeating motifs are very catchy to us, and in a background of that pattern that perhaps only we have noticed, the outliers stick out like sore thumbs. 

That's how I find the typos in text, the errors that otherwise go unnoticed in signs and panels, the digitation errors in data tables, the theme in a song, the beat in city sounds, the signature of an individual's walk. 

Pattern finding is one of the attractions of playing games, especially board games, to an Aspie: by definition, games are sets of arbitrary patterns (the rules), and therefore delightful challenges for pattern-finding minds to figure out the consequences of the rules, the implications of the board design, the structure in how people act.

​Also, board games are structured social interactions, with clear rules that are announced and agreed upon before the fun begins. What a lovely, pleasant, calming time for an Aspie: an opportunity to have fun with people we care about, bound by rules that are clear to all, and meant to be taken literally. Board games level the playing field for us Aspies.