Investigating autistic hyperfocus and monotropism: Limited convergence of event-related potentials, laboratory tasks, and questionnaire responses

<p dir="ltr">Purpose: The autistic-developed monotropism account suggests autism is characterised by hyperfocus towards interests, although hyperfocus research has not explored associations among self-/caregiver-report and lab-based measures. Other findings suggest autistic attention has an enhanced capacity and/or is unusually prone to involuntary capture. This study used questionnaires and lab-based tasks to investigate autistic attention and probe its relations to inattention/distractibility, sensory experiences, and anxiety.</p><p dir="ltr">Methods: 18 autistic and 22 comparison adolescents completed self-report measures of hyperfocus, anxiety, and sensory experiences, and laboratory psychoacoustic tasks, visual working memory and cross-modal attention capture accuracy and reaction time tasks, and a hyperfocus paradigm relying on the N2pc and Pd event-related potentials. Participants’ caregivers completed proxy hyperfocus, anxiety, sensory experiences, and inattention questionnaires.</p><p dir="ltr">Results: Autistic participants had elevated hyperfocus per self- and caregiver-report questionnaires, and exhibited less visual working memory capacity, potentially reflecting difficulty attending to multiple targets. However, groups did not differ in event-related potentials indexing hyperfocus, or behavioural cross-modal attention capture. Different types of attention measures were generally not related to one another. Participants and their caregivers overall viewed hyperfocus’ impact as modestly positive, with individual opinions differing. Self-reported hyperfocus was related to self-reported misophonia and sensory hyperreactivity.</p><p dir="ltr">Conclusions: Questionnaires suggest hyperfocus is elevated in autism and has mixed, nuanced real-world impacts. However, some laboratory paradigms with explicit instructions in highly controlled, often non-naturalistic environments may struggle to capture real-world autistic attentional experiences; additional research is needed to align laboratory and questionnaire measures. This study also suggests autistic perceptual capacities are not globally enhanced.</p>