What is "monotropism"

Monotropism, a typical feature of autism, is when an individual has a restricted range of interests and can only pay attention to what is in his or her attention tunnel. This hypothesis was published in 2005 and was developed by Dinah Murray, a Doctor of Philosophy; Mike Lesser, a mathematician; and Wendy Lawson, a social worker; and regards attention-tunnels as the central feature of autism. Monotropic individuals tend to become too focused on a certain object or activity and find difficulty in shifting their attention, whereas a polytropic individual is capable of spreading his or her attention to multiple things at one time. Monotropic individuals often display stereotypies which occur because the individual focuses his or her attention on one thing, and repeats it until the attention moves. It is also related to monoprocessing, which is defined as the ability to only process information from one source at a time. This is a way to cope with their hypersensitivity to sensory information.

Wendy Lawson, an adult with Asperger syndrome, states that some of her difficulties include “…change in routine, expectation, instruction, daily schedule, movement of attention, and even incorporating another channel into the present scenario.” They also tend to be more satisfied with commands that are implemented immediately rather than commands involving planning ahead and therefore it is often hard for these individuals to understand language that is referencing future actions. Wendy Lawson also states that monotropic individuals think in “closed pictures”, meaning they take pictures literally. For example, they may not be able to associate a cartoon animal with the same animal in real life.