Autism Is the Future by Marlo Payne Thurman

Author:Marlo Payne Thurman [Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Future Horizons
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Interest as a Requirement for Focusing

Less predictable was the idea that interest not only allowed for focus, but was an actual requirement of it. This seemed like a “no brainer” at first —don’t we all focus better when we are interested? With that belief in my head, I must admit, it wasn’t until I heard the same thing ten times over that I began to suspect that there might be something different going on within interests and focus for those who were helping me with the study.

As a reasonably good student and scholar myself, I would say that I have had a much easier time focusing on something when I have found it interesting. But during one of my ASD expert professional interviews, as the participant was detailing the alignment between focus and interest, this possibility finally dawned on me: perhaps for those with ASD, they can’t actually focus well at all on those things that are not within some narrow band of interest.

I posed this topic for discussion with several of the participants and one confirmed this by sending me a study that he had seen on the topic of focus and interest in autism. The specific “why” for focusing difference came later, because it really took me some time to deeply understand how, given all the energy that is required to compensate for multiple cognitive differences, people with autism find it incredibly exhausting to focus on areas that are undeveloped. The primary statements that I felt most closely aligned with this particular aha moment follow.

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