The Hidden Friction of Action: A Framework for Autistic Inertia

Authors

Abstract

Autistic inertia describes difficulty initiating, sustaining, stopping, or shifting action and cognitive state despite conscious intention. Existing accounts, including executive dysfunction, monotropism, predictive processing, autistic burnout, and disability-oriented perspectives, capture important aspects of the phenomenon but remain fragmented. We propose the Hidden Friction Framework (HFF), which addresses how intention can remain intact while its translation into flexible action becomes disrupted. The HFF proposes that autistic inertia may emerge from interacting predictive, transition, sensory–motor, executive–cognitive, emotional, and environmental forms of friction. Rather than treating inertia solely as a problem of action initiation, the framework considers difficulty flexibly entering, sustaining, exiting, or shifting cognitive, sensory, emotional, and behavioral states. It also helps explain why inertia may vary across contexts and why similar behavioral outcomes may arise from different configurations of friction. The HFF integrates cognitive, embodied, environmental, and lived-experience perspectives and generates testable predictions about how different sources of friction may independently and cumulatively shape action and state transition in autism.Keywords: autistic inertia, autism, embodiment, epistemic injustice, neurodiversity, disability theory.

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