The theory of Monotropism (Murray et al., 2005) argues that the central core feature in autism refers to an atypical strategy being employed in the distribution of attention, which is suggested to be the basis of the ‘restricted range of interests’ criteria inherent in the diagnostic criteria of both the DSM-IV (1994) and ICD-10 (1992), and further found in the testimonies of subjective experience from autistic people themselves (Grandin, 1995; Lawson, 1998, Williams, 1994). Monotropism suggests that the amount of attention available to an individual at any one time is necessarily limited, as can be found amongst numerous cognitive studies. Thus the shaping of many cognitive processes depends upon a competition between mental processes for this scarce resource. Murray et al. (2005) propose that strategies for the way attention is used is normally distributed, and to a large degree genetically determined, between those with a broad use of attention, and those who concentrate attention on a small number of ‘interests’ (likened to the difference between a dissipated ‘diffused light’ and a ‘torch beam’). The authors propose that those at the tightly focused end of this spectrum are those diagnosed as on the autism spectrum. It is suggested by Murray et al. (2005) that social interaction, the use of language, and the shifting of object attention (implicated by other psychological theories) are all tasks that require a broad attention, and are inhibited by a narrow use of attention.

This theory suggests a number of features found in autistic subjective accounts that are not attended to by the other psychological theories, including E-S theory (see section 2.4). For instance, how individuals on the autism spectrum show a tendency toward either being passionately interested in a task or phenomena, or not interested at all, or how an unanticipated change ‘within the attentional tunnel’ can lead to a catastrophic disconnection from a previously ‘safe’ state of mind.

If employing a monotropic interest system, the ability to use information gained in the past is compromised, as information is gained only in relation to a narrow set of interests. Thus ‘top- down’ or ‘whole picture’ processing is not ‘dispreferred’ as such, but will tend to be idiosyncratic and resistant to change or criticism. This resistance is not fully explained by a ‘systemising’ tendency (Baron-Cohen, 2008).

Monotropism also suggests a reason for the sensory integration difficulties found in the accounts of autistic people, as they suggest there is a ‘hyper-awareness’ of phenomena within the attentional tunnel, but hypo-sensitivity to phenomena outside of it. Also, that an interest in the social world may not occur in the early years of life:

‘We suggest that the uneven skills profile in autism depends on which interests have been fired into monotropic superdrive and which have been left unstimulated by any felt experience.’ (Murray et al. 2005: 143).

Indeed, the recognition of others may only occur if connected to the fulfilling of interests that the autistic individual has, otherwise the existence of others may not be registered at all. A monotropic focus leads to a fragmented view of the world, and from such a viewpoint it is exceptionally hard to make sense of social interactions, leading to potentially both apparent and real ‘theory of mind’ difficulties. Rather than being a ‘core deficit’ however, this is described as a tendency produced as a consequence of a monotropic interest system.

Source:  So what exactly is autism? 

Newt Scamander as a compassionate portrayal of autistic monotropism (special interests):

While I am not the first to notice this – as Newt Scamander’s autistic tendencies such as his lack of eye contact, his subdued voice and, of course, his ‘special interest’ have been pointed out and praised by many – I do believe that few people have managed to accurately capture what it is about Newt’s hidden condition that makes his potential diagnosis so worthy of praise.
…
Of course this could, as always, just be coincidental. But, if not, then I love the idea that something which so many autists pride as their special interest: Harry Potter, has, in turn, been used to spread a positive message which our community can also cherish.

Source: Why ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ is the Autism Film We NEED – Autistic & Unapologetic

Compare the portrayal of autistic special interest/monotropism in Fantastic Beasts with She-Ra & the Princesses of Power.

On monotropism:

Monotropism is a cognitive strategy posited to be the central underlying feature of autism. A monotropic mind is one that focuses its attention on a small number of interests at any time, tending to miss things outside of this attention tunnel. The theory of monotropism was developed by Dr Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson and Mike Lesser starting in the 1990s, and published about in the journal Autism in 2005. Wenn Lawson’s further work on the theory formed the basis of his PhD, Single Attention and Associated Cognition in Autism, and book The Passionate Mind.

A tendency to focus attention tightly has a number of psychological implications. While monotropism tends to cause people to miss things outside their attention tunnel, within it their focused attention can lend itself to intense experiences, deep thinking and flow states. However, this hyperfocus makes it harder to redirect attention, including starting and stopping tasks, leading to what is often described as executive dysfunction in autism, and stereotypies or perseveration where a person’s attention is repeatedly pulled back to the same thing.

Source: Monotropism – Wikipedia

While we’re here, Newt Scamander as a non-toxic portrayal of masculinity:

Newt Scamander, the protagonist of this Harry Potter spinoff, is a refreshingly atypical male hero for a fantasy adventure blockbuster. This video essay is a detailed character study of Newt Scamander’s performance of masculinity.

Source: The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander

I wish I had my sensory kit during my K-12 years. Schools are not designed for me.

Every Day Coping: What’s in your sensory kit? #AskingAutistics

As his mom, I know there would have been telltale signs throughout the day. But they’re small clues that can be easily missed, as he would have been largely compliant, so therefore no one would have realized there was any problem. But I know as the day progressed, his complexion would have become paler as the energy sapped out of him with each passing hour.

He may have struggled to eat his lunch due to high anxiety. A nervous giggle would have squeaked out when his teachers tried to speak to him. He would have put his head down on the table during lessons or possibly rocked back and forward on his chair to calm himself down. And as the pressure mounted and the clock ticked toward home time, there may have even been some finger picking and sleeve chewing.

My son shows these signs of stress through his body language and gestures. He can’t always communicate his needs verbally, so they can get missed.

The can be a common challenge facing many children on the autism spectrum. Some children are able to contain their feelings all day at school, with the teacher blissfully unaware there’s a problem. However, the stress hormones are slowly building and building inside. This creates a situation that can put incredible pressure on families— especially if teachers don’t understand or believe what the parents are telling them. So let’s think about it this way for a minute…

Source: ‘Delayed Effect’: Child With Autism Melts Down at Home, Not at School | The Mighty

She-Ra & the Princesses of Power is good. It has a lot going for it. I appreciate the body diversity, neurodiversity, inclusivity, and emotional range. I lost count of how many times I choked up. I like shows for the writing, and I like She-Ra.

Character spoilers:

I’m still processing the autistic and ADHD coded Entrapta. Entrapta has elements of the “Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency”, “Attention Deficit… Ooh, Shiny!”, and “Hollywood Autism” tropes. Her Autistic/ADHD hyperfocus conveys incredible scientific talent that she pursues to the exclusion of ethics, evoking “The Madness Place”, “Neurodiversity Is Supernatural”, and “Science-Related Memetic Disorder”.

I relate to parts of her characterization, but she’s pretty heavy on “Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency”, complete with “Dumb Muscle” manipulation by other characters. She often exemplifies the clinically un-empathetic autistic stereotype. In the episode that introduces her, she suggests taking She-Ra apart to see what’s making her sick—with an enthusiastic grin on her face and a gleaming scalpel in hand.

Entrapta says to Glimmer with scalpel in hand: “I’d have to take her apart to be sure.”

Glimmer takes the scalpel from Entrapta and replies, “You’re not taking her apart. She is a person.”

Glimmer also has some autistic coding with her social anxiety and hyper-empathy. Between Glimmer and Entrapta, we can piece together some satisfying autism representation. The most autistic-coded princess being evil by lack of “theory of mind” is a bummer, though. Lack of empathy stereotypes harm us.

I’m looking forward to seeing how both characters develop. Representing Entrapta’s monotropism with its flow states and attention tunnels without using “Lack of Empathy” to sociopathically disaffected levels would be nice for Season 2. I want Entrapta to lean less heavily on the aforementioned tropes and grapple more with morality, manipulation, and pursuing obsession. I hope her emotional and compassionate empathy are revealed to the audience as she confronts her “Moral Event Horizon”.

I can see myself in both Glimmer and Entrapta, except for taking people apart for the sake of curiousity. Dial back on the “Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency”. If she’s gonna break bad, give her some agency.

And this is where the neurotypical belief in theory of mind becomes a liability. Not just a liability – a disability.

Because not only are neurotypicals just as mind-blind to autistics as autistics are to neurotypicals, this self-centered belief in theory of mind makes it impossible to mutually negotiate an understanding of how perceptions might differ among individuals in order to arrive at a pragmatic representation that accounts for significant differences in the experiences of various individuals. It bars any discussion of opening up a space for autistics to participate in social communication by clarifying and mapping the ways in which their perceptions differ. Rather than recognize that the success rate of the neurotypical divining rod is based on mere statistical likelihood that the thoughts and feelings of neurotypicals will correlate, they declare it an ineffable gift, and use it to valorize their own abilities and pathologize those of autistics.

A belief in theory of mind makes it unnecessary for neurotypicals to engage in real perspective-taking, since they are able, instead, to fall back on projection. Differences that they discover in autistic thinking are dismissed as pathology, not as a failure in the neurotypical’s supposed skill in theory of mind or perspective-taking.

Ironically, constantly confronted with the differences in their own thinking and that of those around them, and needing to function in a world dominated by a different neurotype, autistics are engaged in learning genuine perspective-taking from the cradle on. The perceived failure in that perspective-taking is thus based on the fact that autistics do not rely on and cannot rely on neurological similarities to crib understanding by projecting their own thoughts and feelings onto others.

As such, autistics talk about themselves rather than others, a feature of autistic narrative that has been pathologized as “typically autistic” by researchers like Ute Frith. The fact that much of autistic writing is dedicated to deconstructing neurotypical fallacies about autistic thinking set in the world when they spoke about (or for) us, and to explaining differences in autistic thinking in order to broker mutual understanding remains unremarked upon, as it would have required adequate perspective-taking to have identified this.

Thus, if we were to summarize the effect of neurotypicals sitting in wells that are structured in much the same way, delimited in much the same way, oriented in the same general direction and located in the same geographic location, manifested as an unassailable belief in their natural gift of theory of mind, we would have to conclude that this belief in theory of mind severely impairs neurotypicals’ ability to perceive that there is sky or even the great sea outside the narrow limits of their purview. It also necessarily impacts their cognitive empathy vis-à-vis autistics and, sadly, their affective empathy as well.
This deficit in neurotypicals needs to be remediated if autistics are to have a chance to participate as equals, because the truth is, in this regard, autistics suffer and are excluded from social communication not because of our own disability, but because of neurotypical disability.

Source: The belief in a theory of mind is a disability – Semiotic Spectrumite

How autistic characters are used in “Lack of Empathy” tropes:

On the flip side, just because a character has empathy does not mean that they possess one ounce of compassion or sympathy, though the lack of either usually coincides with at least a diminished sense of empathy. For instance, someone with narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder should not be confused with someone with Asperger’s or another form of autism. Narcissists and sociopaths usually have perfect cognitive empathy, but utterly lack affective empathy necessary for genuine compassion. Those with Asperger’s or Autism sometimes have defective cognitive empathy, but normal or even hyper-effective emotional or compassionate empathy. In short: narcissists and sociopaths are generally superficially charming and polite, but their pretense of empathy is simply that, a mere ruse to attain a tangible end. Autistic people, on the other hand, more or less invert this: they’re perfectly capable of feeling other people’s triumphs and tribulations – often quite intensely – but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from their face or tone of voice, and that’s assuming they have learned to identify them.

Source: Lack of Empathy – TV Tropes

…find a love for identity politics…so that we can draw battle lines between those who want shame to grow on trees and those who want to overcome it.

Source: Video Episode 310: Live from the New York Comedy Festival 2018 @58:30 | Harmontown

Insightful monologue on shame and vulnerability starting @51:00.

Shame is not a weapon. Behaviorism too often forgets that. Drawing lines against behaviorism in education draws lines against shame and for equity literacy.

More on shame:

Shame is toxic. It is the difference between “sorry I did” and “sorry I am.”

Source: Shame is not a Weapon. – Love Learning….

Guilt is feeling bad about something you did, something you can fix. Shame is feeling bad about who you are.

Shame cuts off connection and thrives on hiding.

Dyslexia is a particularly powerful form of shame, and it involves a lot of vulnerability.

Vulnerability can be defined as true courage.

Shame is a very lonely moment.

Reading disabilities often match in intensity the level of shame associated with incest.

Dyslexia is a perfect storm of shame.

  1. Arrives at the time you are first being evaluated.
  2. Made harsher by lack of explanation. Fail without context.
  3. Reinforced by peers and institutions

Source: Ben Foss on Dyslexia and Shame

The closet can only stop you from being seen. It is not shame-proof.

And that is what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate.

Source: Hannah Gadsby: Nanette – Netflix

See also: Hannah Gadsby on Shame, Power, and Comedy

We should spend more time talking about how we change the environment that surrounds people and not the people themselves.

Source: The Gift: LD/ADHD Reframed

“Any authority within the space must be aimed at fostering agency in all the members of the community. And this depends on a recognition of the power dynamics and hierarchies that this kind of learning environment must actively and continuously work against. There is no place for shame in the work of education.”

Source: Dear Student

Along with phrases appropriated directly from the so-called alt-right, a small group of neotraditionalist educators have invented the concept of ‘school shaming’ to make their reactionary politics seem, well, less reactionary. Criticize a school for how it treats students, and you’re ‘school shaming’. Talk about structural racism and curriculum, and you’re playing ‘identity politics’. Oppose calls to shore up the authority of teachers in the face of supposedly out-of-control youth, and you’re ‘virtue-signalling’.

‘Slut shaming’ is an attack on women and their identity in a patriarchal society; it’s part of a power dynamics meant to keep women in their place. By extension, we might imagine that the phrase ‘school shaming’ similarly works to expose a harmful power dynamic where schools who publicly advocate for ‘zero tolerance’ policies towards students are somehow oppressed by people who criticize those policies on social media. However, the concept of ‘school shaming’ gets the power dynamics exactly backwards: schools that shame students through authoritarian discipline policies should be open to criticism. Ironically, those who use the phrase ‘school shaming’ are looking for a nuanced and sympathetic treatment of ‘zero tolerance’ schools that the students who attend those schools are denied. Unlike the empty concept of ‘school shaming’ which seems to have been invented by Andrew Smith (@oldandrewuk), ‘student shaming’ functions as a critical concept to name what has long been called ‘deficit thinking’ about students. When a school looks for teachers who “know how to act appalled over the little stuff”, that’s in effect asking for teachers who know how to shame students.

Source: ‘School shaming’ and the reactionary politics of neotrads – Long View on Education

Along with phrases appropriated directly from the so-called alt-right, a small group of neotraditionalist educators have invented the concept of ‘school shaming’ to make their reactionary politics seem, well, less reactionary. Criticize a school for how it treats students, and you’re ‘school shaming’. Talk about structural racism and curriculum, and you’re playing ‘identity politics’. Oppose calls to shore up the authority of teachers in the face of supposedly out-of-control youth, and you’re ‘virtue-signalling’.

‘Slut shaming’ is an attack on women and their identity in a patriarchal society; it’s part of a power dynamics meant to keep women in their place. By extension, we might imagine that the phrase ‘school shaming’ similarly works to expose a harmful power dynamic where schools who publicly advocate for ‘zero tolerance’ policies towards students are somehow oppressed by people who criticize those policies on social media. However, the concept of ‘school shaming’ gets the power dynamics exactly backwards: schools that shame students through authoritarian discipline policies should be open to criticism. Ironically, those who use the phrase ‘school shaming’ are looking for a nuanced and sympathetic treatment of ‘zero tolerance’ schools that the students who attend those schools are denied. Unlike the empty concept of ‘school shaming’ which seems to have been invented by Andrew Smith (@oldandrewuk), ‘student shaming’ functions as a critical concept to name what has long been called ‘deficit thinking’ about students. When a school looks for teachers who “know how to act appalled over the little stuff”, that’s in effect asking for teachers who know how to shame students.

Source: ‘School shaming’ and the reactionary politics of neotrads – Long View on Education

“Any authority within the space must be aimed at fostering agency in all the members of the community. And this depends on a recognition of the power dynamics and hierarchies that this kind of learning environment must actively and continuously work against. There is no place for shame in the work of education.”

Source: Dear Student