A round-up of published work on monotropism.
Most weeks now, there's new research published talking about autism in terms of monotropism: a tendency to concentrate attention, and have relatively few interests aroused at a time.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
A lot of autistic people feel this explains our experience better than any other theory. Thread:
#Monotropism getting this much attention has been a long time coming!
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
My mum started talking about autism in these terms in the 1990s, building on her 1986 PhD thesis with help from Mike Lesser and later @WennLawson.
Here's a 1997 chapter on 'normality':https://t.co/wmhQuAIm7d
She presented at various conferences about her ideas, developing them as she got to know and befriend various other autistic people, disabled to varying degrees.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
In 2005 she published this paper in @JournalAutism together with Wenn Lawson and Mike Lesser:https://t.co/V9KD7IqRmf
The 2005 #monotropism paper has now been cited 288 times according to Google Scholar, half of these citations coming in the years since 2017 (there must be a way to make a graph of this, right?)https://t.co/qHkiBXrWMS@ResearchGate tracks 158 citations:https://t.co/8tTPJbOlEl
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
I wanted to track some recent work on monotropism here, largely but not exclusively in academic journals.@JulesAndCo took the intriguing approach of trying to quantify what proportion of autistic schoolchildrens' experiences different theories explained.https://t.co/Z3odC9QehT pic.twitter.com/wTA5JxTGRD
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
Her conclusion was that Monotropism Theory explained substantially more of the experiences reported than any of the other theories she looked at.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
I'm still not sure it doesn't *also* explain every experience that Executive Functioning Theory explains, but this is promising work!
She says: 'On exploration of the literature pertaining to Monotropism theory in search of supporting evidence or criticism, there appears to be little of either. Notably the majority of the researchers who have written about its positive potential, including myself are autistic.'
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
Another researcher to look at monotropism in the context of education is @TheWoodBug, who focused on the power of working with autistic students' intense interests.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
'Special interests' in autistic are often pathologised rather than recognised as compelling passions bringing joy.
Becky Wood found that monotropism offered a valuable lens for understanding and working with the intense interests of autistic students, and that respecting these passions could do a tremendous amount to advance their educational inclusion.https://t.co/4J6LgfD0kW
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
@DjzemaLouiz (Gemma Williams) looks at autism through the lens of psycholinguistics, which is also where my mum started out – in fact, she is working with Relevance Theory, which Dinah's 1986 thesis also built on…
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
Here is Gemma's full 2020 PhD thesis: https://t.co/g0MHBOGNSd
Here's an hour-long presentation and discussion on @DjzemaLouiz's work.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
She explores the #DoubleEmpathy Problem first framed by @milton_damian in some depth with the help of monotropism and the power of the intensity of autistic interests.https://t.co/l1FeKXPhKc
@milton_damian himself goes on doing important work relating to monotropism, including some very interesting explorations of #flow states such as this 2014 paper: https://t.co/exdmf47Qj8
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
Perhaps most accessible is this presentation for @StudioIII on it: https://t.co/aD8pWwyp5f
@rachel_fricker builds on these ideas in her ongoing PhD work on hyperfocus, which she talks about here:https://t.co/FeEKTJWgTL
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
David Hartley, @DHartleyWriter, draws heavily on Monotropism in his 2021 PhD thesis, using a #neuroqueer lens to look at autistic representation in Bladerunner and @CommunityTV.https://t.co/pSQv92v9OA
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
You can also find him on YouTube: https://t.co/FIImBK639V
In their important 'Conceptual Analysis of Autistic Masking: Understanding the Narrative of Stigma and the Illusion of Choice' @DrAmyPearson and @KieranRose7 look at the role of monotropism in contextual identity shifts and masking. I look forward to more!https://t.co/xYm627DyGX
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
Emily Goldknopf's fascinating 2013 paper 'Atypical resource allocation may contribute to many aspects of autism' provides substantial neurological evidence for the concentration of resources that Monotropism suggests is central to the autistic experience.https://t.co/VBv1Gl8C9L
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
One researcher who has dedicated a huge amount of time and careful thought to monotropism is @Richard_Autism, who is currently trying to help make a book about it happen.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
Here's one talk he gave on the topic:https://t.co/VHSsFoK958
I will add more to this thread later – as I say, there is (finally) new monotropism research coming out all the time, and I've probably missed a lot of really interesting work here…#AllAutistics #ActuallyAutistic #AutisticsInAcademia #autism #psychologyhttps://t.co/sWHrHtlVOJ
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 1, 2021
One more thing to add right now – Dinah's chapter for The Neurodiversity Reader, Dimensions of Difference, brings us more-or-less up to date on her own thinking about #monotropism and #neurodiversity more broadly.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 2, 2021
This is now posted on her web site, here:https://t.co/U7ndEEhrMz
I guess I should add my 2019 article for @psychmag, in which I argue that #monotropism is the closest thing we have to a unified theory of autism: something that makes sense of every part of autistic experience coherently.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 3, 2021
Autism is not THAT mysterious…https://t.co/2GNCUbTObx
Monotropism is also appearing more and more frequently in practical works like @SusyRidout's 'Neurodiversity, Autism, and Recovery from Sexual Violence', because it has such clear practical implications.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) June 4, 2021
I don't think any other autism theory is so USEFUL.https://t.co/NimBdaNx8I
I neglected to link to more of @WennLawson's recent work on #monotropism when I first did this thread.https://t.co/SWrZSoFii9
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
Moving away from research for a minute, this monotropism animation by @KieranRose7 and @JoshKnowles75 is pretty great.https://t.co/KgkkbZzos1
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
Monotropism is a running theme in the new book Learning from Autistic Teachers', across at least three chapters and the introduction. It's dedicated 'In memory of Dr Dinah Murray, who taught us much' (also to @thewoodbug's mum Helena).
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
Out in three weeks!https://t.co/FL0hCYpQX5
I thought this was an interesting exploration of some ideas around #monotropism.https://t.co/IQcnYqJoys
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
In this piece, @stefaniadonzel7 explores what monotropism means for autistic play, particularly but not exclusively in the context of Forest School.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
Lots more research is called for on this!https://t.co/YlyoBl3fJI
Podcast host and accessibility expert @spacedoutsmiles has been finding the idea of monotropism seriously useful in recent months, with a 'tunnels not tasks' approach to getting things done.https://t.co/IwXKsaFBVq
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
He talks a bit more about monotropism and attention tunnels in this post:https://t.co/O0godbADNj
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
The vital 'Autistic perspectives on the future of clinical autism research' mentions monotropism along with neurodiversity, the double empathy problem, autistic inertia, monotropism, hyperfocus and autistic space as important autistic-developed concepts.https://t.co/29kaP9vnml
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
Patrick Dwyer talks about #monotropism and what it might mean for ADHD as well as autism in 'Revisiting Monotropism':https://t.co/Nb2AIifLHS
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
I believe this article by the same author, for the journal Human Development, also talks about monotropism a bit, but I haven't been able to access it yet (@AutisticSchoIar is this you?)https://t.co/4CCulFo5OO
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
Sneha Kohli Mathur, of @ChapmanU, rightly identifies monotropism, neurodiversity and the double empathy problem as key theoretical perspectives for making sense of autistic experience.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 2, 2022
"Monotropism was woven into every single autobiography in some way"…https://t.co/7yvzGCy1sJ
Oh, another thing I should have added: Dinah's Monotropism entry for Volkmar's autism encyclopaedia.https://t.co/3bniMQGggY
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) April 3, 2022
In this 2021 paper, @MarianthiKourti discusses #Monotropism and Critical Realism, a pretty solid "meta-theory that explores how science comes to understand the world and how epistemology, the process of knowledge creation, engages with and shapes ontology"https://t.co/t9U8MibWQf
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) May 25, 2022
A researcher who has been using #Monotropism in practical, play-based embodied work since at least 2006 is Wendy Keay-Bright (@KeayWendy) with Reactivities and the Reactive Colours project.
— Oolong 🍉 (@MxOolong) May 25, 2022
She built here on Murray & Lesser's pioneering Autism & Computinghttps://t.co/6MU1CZRaRW