Monotropism is a person’s tendency to focus their attention on a small number of interests at any time, often leading them to overlook things outside of this narrowed focus. This cognitive strategy has been suggested as a central underlying feature of autism. Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson, and Mike Lesser developed the theory of monotropism in the 1990s and first published it in 2005.
Monotropism, a cognitive theory explaining autism, suggests that autistic individuals intensely focus on singular interests, leading to deep expertise and unique problem-solving skills while often struggling to shift attention to broader, less engaging tasks. In this video, I take the monotropism test and see if that aligns with my own cognitive style.
How do you pay attention? What do you pay attention to? Can you direct your attention? Do you sometimes feel like a slave to your attention orientation? Monotropism is a theory around attention that many autistic people, including myself, resonate with. It describes both our strengths and our weaknesses. Before I read the original paper proposing this theory, I felt it made sense of practically everything in terms of how my attention plays out. However, after reading the full paper and further researching, I realised it didn’t even touch the sides. This is a video about that.