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Monotropism, a typical feature of autism, is when an individual has a restricted range of interests and can only pay attention to what is in his or her attention tunnel. This hypothesis was published in 2005 and was developed by Dinah Murray, a Doctor of Philosophy; Mike Lesser, a mathematician; and Wendy Lawson, a social worker; and regards attention-tunnels as the central feature of autism.〔 Monotropic individuals tend to become too focused on a certain object or activity and find difficulty in shifting their attention, whereas a polytropic individual is capable of spreading his or her attention to multiple things at one time. Monotropic individuals often display stereotypies which occur because the individual focuses his or her attention on one thing, and repeats it until the attention moves. It is also related to monoprocessing, which is defined as the ability to only process information from one source at a time. This is a way to cope with their hypersensitivity to sensory information. Wendy Lawson, an adult with Asperger syndrome, states that some of her difficulties include “…change in routine, expectation, instruction, daily schedule, movement of attention, and even incorporating another channel into the present scenario.” They also tend to be more satisfied with commands that are implemented immediately rather than commands involving planning ahead and therefore it is often hard for these individuals to understand language that is referencing future actions. Wendy Lawson also states that monotropic individuals think in “closed pictures”, meaning they take pictures literally. For example, they may not be able to associate a cartoon animal with the same animal in real life. == Neurobiology == Individuals with monotropism have problems sustaining performance because of attention regulation dysfunction, meaning that something is wrong with their behavioral control system, meaning the parts of the brain that control behavior and attention. Children with monotropism generally perform poorly at tasks involving executive function, attention, processing speed, and motor coordination. It has been found that children with autism have significantly lower reading scores than normal children and both children with autism and children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) perform poorly in attention tasks as compared to a non-disabled child. Children with autism and ADHD also performed significantly worse in tasks pertaining to reading, attention, graphomotor skills, and processing speed. Neuropsychological functioning is similar in children with high-functioning autism and ADHD. A defining characteristic of individuals with monotropism is that they have problems involving shifting, keeping, and engaging attention. Multiple studies have suggested that cerebellar abnormalities could correlate with these trends, and that in these individuals the cerebellum must work harder than normal to achieve tasks. The prefrontal areas have been known to have greater excitation in the brains of these children as well. The amount of attention available is limited, so cognitive processes are forced to compete. Tasks that require a broad attention span include social interaction, language, and shifting attention, therefore monotropic individuals have problems with all of these. They struggle with top down processing and do not react well to unanticipated change.〔 Sometimes the individuals deregulation of thought turns into a psychotic disorder.〔 The fusiform gyrus is known to be activated by human faces and has been found to be hypoactive in autistic children, however this is not the only disorder in which this is the case. Eye gaze is also known to activate the superior temporal gyrus, which is less active in monotropic children with autism. These children often cannot imitate or comprehend gestures. However, some have hyperactive olfactory pathways and are able to identify people by their smell. Dysfunctional neural circuits are characteristic of autism 〔 Some regions under investigation to be a potential source of autism include the frontal lobes, temporal lobes, insula, limbic system, corpus callosum, thalamus, brainstem, and cerebellum,〔 and therefore these areas could be related to monotropism. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Monotropism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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