What is Monotropism?
"A tendency to focus attention on a small number of interests at any time, tending to miss things outside of this attention tunnel." ā Murray, Lesser & Lawson (2005)
The Core Idea
Monotropism describes a cognitive style where attention is:
- Narrow ā focused on fewer things at once
- Deep ā intensely absorbed when engaged
- Sticky ā hard to shift between focuses
- Tunneled ā peripheral awareness is reduced
The opposite is polytropism ā attention distributed across many channels simultaneously.
In My Words
"normally my life is me in a dark space with a candle therefore i can only see and concentrate on the object of my hyperfocus" ā 2023-09 | 14 months before learning the word
Key Features
Attention tunnelling:
- Single powerful beam of attention
- Everything outside the tunnel is dimmed
- Switching costs are high
Interest-driven:
- Engagement follows interest, not obligation
- Intrinsic motivation is essential
- "Can't" focus isn't won't ā it's architecture
Flow-prone:
- When engaged, deep flow states occur naturally
- Time disappears
- Interruption is painful
Context-dependent:
- Information learned in one context may not transfer
- Memory is state-dependent
- "Out of sight, out of mind" is literal
What It Explains
Monotropism provides a unified explanation for many autistic traits:
- Hyperfocus ā the narrow, deep attention beam
- Difficulty with transitions ā high switching cost
- Special interests ā where the tunnel naturally goes
- Sensory sensitivity ā focused attention intensifies input
- Social challenges ā social cues require distributed attention
- Executive function ā planning needs polytropy
- Meltdowns ā tunnel overload or forced breaks
The Reframe
Traditional model: "Autism is a deficit."
Monotropism model: "Autism is a different attention architecture."
Not broken. Different.
ā The History | The Theorists