Monotropism, the attention tunnel, and why "just multitask" never worked.
A theory of autism written from the inside: why we go deep instead of wide, why being pulled out hurts, why starting and stopping are the same problem, and how ADHD fits in.
In 1992, at an autism conference in Durham, England, a woman named Dinah Murray gave a talk called "Attention Tunnelling and Autism."
Most theories of autism back then were written by people looking at us through glass. Murray was looking out. She was autistic herself, though, as a friend put it after she died, she rejected "its medical framework." Thirteen years later she published the idea properly, in the journal Autism, with Mike Lesser and the autistic researcher Wenn Lawson. Their claim was blunt: "atypical strategies for the allocation of attention are central to the condition." (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, Autism, 2005)
They called it monotropism. One direction. Murray died in 2021. Her autistic child, the writer Fergus Murray, keeps the idea moving, and a lot of us have read it and felt seen in a way the diagnostic manual never managed.
Tonight is about that idea, what it explains, where the evidence is still thin, and what to do on a Tuesday when someone taps you on the shoulder mid-thought.
Everyone's attention goes somewhere. The question is how many places at once.
The 2005 paper put it as two tendencies. Some minds run on "having many interests less highly aroused." That's polytropic, and it's what most of the world is built for: answer the email while listening to the meeting while noticing the time. Other minds run on "having few interests highly aroused, the monotropic tendency." (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005)
Fergus Murray's shorter version: "monotropism is the tendency for our interests to pull us in more strongly than most people." Whatever has your attention has all of it. Everything outside the tunnel gets dimmer, sometimes to the point of not existing. That's the hunger you didn't notice, the bladder you ignored for three hours, the name somebody said twice. (F. Murray, The Psychologist, 2018, updated 2025)
Inside the tunnel is often the best place we know. In a 2024 study, 24 autistic adults described getting absorbed in a task, and their accounts closely matched what psychologists call flow. They said the hard part was balancing that joy against the rest of life. They also said it was where they could be themselves, with no pretences. (Rapaport et al., Autism in Adulthood, 2024)
"To a person in an attention tunnel every unanticipated change is abrupt and is truly, if briefly, catastrophic."
That's from the 2005 paper, and it keeps going: "a complete disconnection from a previous safe state, a plunge into a meaningless blizzard of sensations." If you've ever snapped at someone who said your name while you were reading, that sentence is the explanation you never had. (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005)
Fergus Murray again: "It is deeply destabilising to be pulled out of an attention tunnel." (F. Murray, 2018/2025)
Interruptions cost everyone something. In a 2008 study, people answering email in a simulated office finished faster when they kept getting interrupted. They also came out more stressed and frustrated, and felt more time pressure. Nobody has run that study on autistic or ADHD workers yet. I'd bet the stress number goes up. (Mark, Gudith & Klocke, CHI, 2008)
The lab research on switching agrees, with caveats. A 2024 meta-analysis pooled 59 studies of more than 2,000 autistic people and found a small-to-moderate difficulty with mental flexibility. The biggest gap was in sticking with an old rule after it changed. The results also varied a lot from person to person. (Lage, Smith & Lawson, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2024)
"Like I am stranded in the middle of the sea... no way out except from external intervention."
That's how one participant described autistic inertia in a 2021 study led by an autistic researcher. Across six focus groups, 32 autistic adults described "difficulty starting, stopping and changing activities that was not within their conscious control." Some things helped: a prompt from someone else, or a related activity nearby to slide into. Stress made it worse. (Buckle, Leadbitter, Poliakoff & Gowen, Frontiers in Psychology, 2021)
A 2026 study read 501 Reddit threads about inertia going back to 2005. People described it as all or nothing, and as a vicious cycle: stuck, then exhausted from being stuck, then more stuck. (Ward et al., Communications Psychology, 2026)
We usually get told these are two separate failures. One gets called procrastination, the other gets called obsession, and both get called a lack of discipline. Monotropism says they're one mechanism seen from both ends. Getting into a tunnel takes a lot, and getting out costs a lot, so you get stuck at the door and then stuck inside. A 2026 review of 43 publications put the contrast in a sentence: "Autistic inertia hinders task initiation and transitions, in contrast to flow's seamless engagement." Once you see it as one thing, you stop fighting two. (Pace-Tonna et al., Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2026)
The tunnel isn't only an autistic thing.
In two samples of adults, 251 and then 372, people with more ADHD symptoms reported more hyperfocus: in school, in hobbies, on screens. A 2021 review warned that the word itself "is poorly defined within the literature," which is a polite way of saying the field is still arguing about what it's measuring. (Hupfeld, Abagis & Shah, 2019; Ashinoff & Abu-Akel, Psychological Research, 2021)
When autistic researchers built a questionnaire to measure monotropism, they found something they didn't set out to find. In Fergus Murray's words: "we also found that ADHD was correlated with higher MQ scores, both in autistic and non-autistic populations." A 2026 study of 492 adults, including 141 who are both autistic and ADHD, found sensitivity to sound markedly raised in both the autistic and the ADHD groups, with only small differences between them. (Garau et al., preprint, 2023; Dwyer, Williams, Lawson & Rivera, J Atten Disord, 2026)
You may have heard ADHD called an "interest-based nervous system." That phrase comes from one clinician, William Dodson, writing for ADDitude in 2013. He lists interest, challenge, novelty and urgency as what switches people on. It's useful, and it's based on his patients, not on studies. (Dodson, ADDitude, 2013, updated 2025)
Special interests are good for us. Up to a point.
In a Dutch study of around 700 autistic adults, about two thirds had a special interest. Among them, being motivated by the interest went with higher wellbeing. The catch: "a very high intensity of engagement with special interests was negatively related to wellbeing." The tunnel is a good place to live. It's a hard place to never leave. (Grove, Hoekstra, Wierda & Begeer, Autism Research, 2018)
A 2025 study of 150 adults found the same double edge. One side of autistic attention looked like intense, enjoyable focus. The other side looked like trouble controlling attention, tied to sensory distress and anxiety. (Dwyer, Dakakni, Faris & Unwin, preprint, 2025)
Now the honest part. Monotropism is a theory, and a young one when it comes to data. The Monotropism Questionnaire is still a preprint, and its authors say plainly it is not an autism test, whatever TikTok says. One 2025 study of autistic teenagers found that questionnaire answers, lab tasks and brain-wave measures of focus "were generally not related to one another." Fergus Murray says he wants a lot more research to back the idea up. A theory that fits our lives this well deserves to be tested properly. (Garau et al., 2023; Dwyer, Sillas, Saron & Rivera, Research in Autism, 2025)
Most of this is lived wisdom. The guide says which parts have research behind them.
"Ten minutes until we leave" beats a hand on the shoulder. Tell the people you live and work with that a heads-up turns a crash into a landing. This one comes from autistic people, not from trials.
Notifications off, door shut, a sign if you need one. Interrupted workers in one study got faster and more stressed. Protecting a block of time is cheaper than recovering from the stress.
Before you stop, write one line about where you were and what's next. Coming back to a note is easier than coming back to nothing. Lived wisdom.
People in the inertia study got moving with a prompt from someone else, or a related activity close at hand. Want to write? Open the document and reread yesterday's paragraph first.
Stress made inertia worse. When you're stuck, yelling at yourself makes the door heavier. Make the next step smaller and the room quieter first.
A 2025 paper on autism support put it as "joining the autistic individual in their attention tunnel rather than trying to get them to come out." Ask about the interest. Sit beside it. That's how you reach us.
Motivation for special interests went with higher wellbeing. Schedule time for yours the way you'd schedule a meal. It isn't a reward you earn after the chores.
Very high intensity went with lower wellbeing. Set an alarm with a kind message, keep water and a snack within reach, and plan what you'll do when you surface.
Answer one, or all of them, or just listen. Chat counts.
The interest, the project, the show, the thing that eats whole afternoons.
A voice, a notification, a knock, a change of plans.
Someone else's prompt, a ritual, a song, a smaller first step.
One sentence. That's a list the people in your life could use.
Monotropism is a theory with a young evidence base. Several studies here are preprints, small, or based on self-report, and nobody has tested these accommodations in a trial. The guide says where that's the case.
A lot of us were punished for this: called rude for not hearing, lazy for not starting, obsessed for not stopping. Some of that grief might show up tonight. It belongs here too.
Bring the tunnel you're in this week, or the one you can't get into.