Monotropism and polytropism – attentional styles in autism

If you’d told me ten years ago that understanding my attentional style would be totally transformative down the line, I’d have been quite underwhelmed. I would have wanted my transformation to sound much more profound and dramatic than that.

But here we are.

Understanding different types of attention put words to parts of my daily life that had semi-consciously confounded and overwhelmed me for years. Figuring out monotropism and hyperfocus through the lens of autism and ADHD made sense of some debilitating experiences, as well as validating the deep dives and flow states that bring me so much joy.

With words and definitions that I could put to my experiences, I had the awareness to bring in more choice, more clarity, and good strategies – reducing the stress and increasing the fun.

I set out to write a single post about this, and swiftly realised that wouldn’t do. In a meta moment of monotropic hyperfocus, I jumped in too deep to be able to come out with just one article. The intricate world of attention and focus – especially when it comes to autism and ADHD – includes many connected and overlapping concepts. So, rather than trying to stuff it all into one post, I’ll create a series of related articles and link to them here.

What on earth is ‘attentional style’ anyway?

Attention is the way we direct our awareness. We select where we put our awareness, to the exclusion of other stimuli which get filtered out as distractions. Focus, on the other hand, is keeping our attention on something specific, also to the exclusion of competing demands or distractions.

‘Attention is defined as a process of selection applied to the product of perception, and may even be directed toward memories. To direct attention on a perceptual or internally represented entity, our working memory must be trained on a goal for the duration of the task at hand.’

Attentional styles, then, have come out of research showing that different people direct their attention in distinct ways. This impacts our focus – what we focus on, how deeply, and for how long. It also impacts the quality of our experience, generating states that can be positive (like flow state or certain aspects of hyperfocus), or ones that are stressful, generating anxiety and negatively impacting us.

From a neurodiversity perspective, understanding these mechanisms as different styles and states can help us frame them as strengths – and even gifts. While the differences can be disabling and distressing depending on the context, and the expectations placed upon us (by ourselves or others), it’s refreshing to consider that they can be positively leveraged too.

In this article, I’m looking at distinct definitions for the sake of clarity. In reality, though, there’s complexity and crossover. Despite my desire to convey every facet of the topic in some all-encompassing, fractal, sense-making map… let’s start by making sense of the key concepts!

Monotropism – the deep attentional spotlight

Monotropism is a concept that was first coined by autistic researcher Dr. Dinah Murray in 1992, where ‘mono’ means one or single, and ‘tropic’ means channel. This ‘single channel’ attentional style is explained by a high concentration of processing resources going to limited focal points. A narrow ‘attentional tunnel’ is the outcome, explaining the sustained, deep focus of autistic people on a more narrow range of interests than non-autistic people.

The idea has been developed over time by autistic people based on their lived experience, and actually combines many aspects of the autistic experience into one theory. It’s based on the type of attention described above, but it also suggests that this ‘interest system’ drives other key areas of the autistic experience – like social communication, emotional regulation and sensory processing.

If you’re autistic and the idea of monotropism is new to you, it’ll probably bring about an ‘aha!’ moment. Because you’ll be deeply familiar with the experience of being pulled in so deep to one area of interest that ‘changing channel’ feels almost impossible. You’ll also know that daily life mostly isn’t designed to support this kind of attention – adult life in an individualistic, independence-driven culture requires us to switch focus a lot. We need to keep on top of work, social life, domestic life… just All the Things. The actual deep-dive attentional experience can be deeply fulfilling, but it’s pretty difficult to manage when it comes to supporting yourself on a practical level.

For example, you’ve gone deep into an area you’re interested in. You’re researching, organising, making sense of things. It’s intrinsically satisfying, but it starts to get stressful. You’re in so deep that you’ve lost sight of your signals for hunger, you haven’t done any food shopping, you haven’t responded to messages. You’re watching the progress towards other important goals slip away, and you feel annoyed about having to pull yourself out of the tunnel into anything else (like going to work, seeing humans you care about – little things like that).

If you’re not autistic, it might be a curious thing to read about. You can likely relate to the concept of deeply focused attention that’s hard to switch out of (keep reading for more versions of that), but it might be less intuitive to grasp how this type of attention could at once shape, animate and restrict a person’s whole life. I’ve planned an article where I share more about the lived experience and neurological mechanics of monotropism, along with supportive strategies for positive change. But a part of building awareness is understanding alternative modes of attention too…

Polytropism: the diffuse scan

Understanding polytropism (hot on the heels of my discovery of monotropism) gave me a similar ‘aha’ to understanding ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ thinking. In both cases, I was able to grasp what type of processing and thinking other people had as their default.

I’d see the way others engaged with their interests or their work, and notice that they – at least on the surface – dealt with certain tasks, decisions and environments more easily than me. There’d always been something about the level of depth I brought to tasks that seemed confusing or odd to people, whilst I didn’t know how to do it any differently – even when it was creating stress.

One of the puzzle pieces I was sensing – without being able to put my finger on it – was that the people I was comparing myself to experienced ‘polytropic’ attention as their default. That means they tended towards a more diffuse scan; dividing their attention automatically across multiple domains rather than going deep into a single ‘channel’.

Polytropism was put forward alongside monotropism to provide a conceptual opposite. It describes the more common attentional style where attention is distributed across a broader range of interests or stimuli. Switching between tasks tends to be easier for polytropic people, and they can generally maintain awareness of multiple things at once.

Nobody’s brain is designed to do multiple tasks at once – we all know the inefficiency of flitting between 5 tabs and 3 tasks all at the same time (none of it really gets done). But a polytropic brain naturally ‘multitasks’ in terms of being aware of bodily signals and competing priorities in the background, so that the main task at hand doesn’t block them from attending to those other things if they become more urgent.

Similarly, for the polytropic person various channels of attention can easily be engaged at once without that causing sensory or physiological stress – like being in a cafe chatting to someone, and unconsciously monitoring sound levels, background noise, body language, and communication simultaneously.

Most people lean towards polytropism, so we collectively assume that everyone does. If you’re monotropic but don’t know it, you can spend years feeling like you’re failing at basic things. There are unspoken expectations: that everyone can switch between tasks easily, balance multiple life domains, or engage with things at a ‘reasonable’ depth without getting consumed. When that’s not how your attention works you can find yourself in an internal struggle, fighting against your own way of being. Understanding monotropism can lead to genuine self-compassion; understanding that this is about difference rather than deficiency, allowing you to design your life according to your style rather than your attempts to meet expectations that don’t fit.

Beyond monotropism – hyperfocus and ADHD

I mentioned before that a polytropic person can still experience states of intense, single-channel focus. That’s why a non-autistic person can relate to aspects of monotropic experience, despite not knowing what it’s like to be monotropic. One area that many people can relate to is the experience of ‘hyperfocus’, which is also connected to the concept of ‘flow state’ – which you’ll be able to read more about in a forthcoming article. 

This is especially relevant for ADHDers, who tend not to fit quite into the autistic definition of monotropism or the non-autistic definition of polytropism. Much like autistic people, their attentional differences (like hyperfocus or difficulty with sustaining focus on a given task) tend to have a big impact on daily life. There are key differences in the underlying neurology, and some of them apply beyond the narrow confines of diagnostic buckets. Designing life with attentional awareness

Rather than trying to neatly place people into categories, it can be helpful to simply build awareness of different styles of attention in ourselves and others. As an autistic person, a more in-depth understanding of monotropism can be incredibly helpful, as it shapes so many elements of the autistic experience. Beyond that, I recommend becoming generally familiar with these different styles, and being curious about where we might be situated.

Building self-awareness around our own attentional states can open the door to managing them differently. It can also help us understand and support the people around us. Living with someone who can’t pull themselves away from a task – despite neglecting other things or there being another urgent priority – is pretty frustrating sometimes. We might be more able to be patient when we understand it’s a brain-wiring thing, rather than a stubborn or defiant refusal to switch channel.

With greater understanding comes the opportunity to design our days in ways that leverage – and make the best use of – our natural cognitive styles.

Stay tuned for more articles in this series: a deeper dive into the multifaceted monotropic experience; a comparison of hyperfocus and flow state; and an exploration of the intriguing concept of holotropism.