Attention, Monotropism, and Sensory Experiences in Autistic Adolescents: Characterization via Multiple Measurement Methods
This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. one author of this publication is identified as autistic in the project.
About the autistic author markerPatrick, D. (2023). Attention, Monotropism, and Sensory Experiences in Autistic Adolescents: Characterization via Multiple Measurement Methods [Dissertation]. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0p48q8d2
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Abstract
This report presents preliminary data from an ongoing study of attention and sensory experiences in autistic adolescents. Although sensory differences in autism are widely-reported and impactful, particularly in the auditory modality, autism literature has only recently begun to attempt to distinguish auditory sensory phenotypes, such as emotional misophonic reactions to potentially-soft trigger sounds, versus hyperacusis-like reactions of finding highly intense sounds distressing, painful, or overwhelming; therefore, the first chapter of this thesis focuses on characterizing auditory sensory experiences in autism. Furthermore, although the monotropism hypothesis proposes that autistic hyper-focus is central to many autistic experiences, it has received little direct empirical research attention, particularly in cognitive science; the second chapter of this thesis aims to address this gap. Both chapters use a mixture of laboratory-based tasks and questionnaires.The preliminary sample includes 14 autistic and 17 typically-developing adolescents, aged 11–16 years. In Chapter 1, autistic participants exhibited psychoacoustic evidence of hyperacusis-like reactions, and questionnaire reports indicated they experienced more auditory sensory fear/overload, anxiety/avoidance, and generalized hyperreactivity. Psychoacoustic and self-report measures of misophonia, but not hyperacusis, appeared to converge with one another. In Chapter 2, caregiver-report questionnaires suggested autistic people experienced elevated hyper-focus; both caregivers and autistic people appeared to view hyper-focus somewhat favourably on average, with considerable individual variability in perspective. However, group differences in hyper-focus did not extend to laboratory task paradigms, emphasizing the need for further research to rigorously characterize the cognitive underpinnings of the hyper-focus experienced by autistic people in the real world. Interestingly, autistic people seemed to self-report less hyper-focus (Chapter 2) and fewer atypical sensory experiences (Chapter 1) than their caregivers’ proxy-reports indicated, whereas the opposite pattern characterized the comparison group. This pattern is not consistent with prior autism sensory literature, and possible interpretations are discussed.
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