Many autistic people have intense and highly-focused interests, often from a fairly young age. These can change over time or be lifelong. It can be art, music, gardening, animals, postcodes or numbers.
Most common in high-functioning people with autism, fixations often manifest as intense focus surrounding a certain topic or area of interest. For example, a person with autism may obsessively practice a particular skill, or may read every book and article written about a certain subject.
Autistic children are frequently reported to show obsessions and compulsions. This terminology implies that such behaviours in autism are similar to those seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder.
These interests are extremely common among people with autism: 75 to 95 percent have them. An interest may involve collecting items such as postcards or dolls, listening to or playing music in a repetitive way, or focusing intensely on a narrow topic, such as insects fighting.
Autistic people may also experience obsessions. These may involve interests in specific areas, such as numbers or facts. Autistic people can also become “stuck” on certain topics of interest. This means they dwell on, or repeatedly express specific thoughts.
Common Autism Obsessions
Fixation on a particular topic or subject: Many people with autism have a deep interest in a particular topic, such as trains, dinosaurs, or computers. They may spend hours reading about or talking about this topic, to the exclusion of other activities.
The autistic brain shows fewer long-range connections but a lot more short-range connections. This means that with every thought, more connections are made, but also more side-steps; it produces nonlinear thought processes.
Due to sensory sensitivities, someone with autism might: display unusual sensory seeking behaviour such as sniffing objects or staring intently at moving objects. display unusual sensory avoidance behaviours including evasion of everyday sounds and textures such as hair dryers, clothing tags, vacuum cleaners and sand.
'Hyperfixation' is being completely immersed in something to the exclusion of everything else. It's more common in autistic people and can be a great asset. In this state a great deal of learning, productivity and appreciation can take place.
Every autistic person is different, but sensory differences, changes in routine, anxiety, and communication difficulties are common triggers.
It is easy to see why many children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are captivated by water. The number of stimuli associated with water hits all the senses!
An obsessed person always thinks of having the beloved one on his or her side all day. When you're fixated on someone, it feels more like you're suffocating. It feels like you need them… like you must have them treat you a certain way, give you a certain relationship title, or somehow prove their commitment to you.
Amazingly, many of the fears reported in our sample were described in children with autism 70 years ago by Kanner, including fear of vacuum cleaners, elevators, mechanical toys, swings, and the wind. Children with autism perceive, experience, and react to the world differently than children without autism.
Obsessions and compulsions are both common in adults with high-functioning ASD and are associated with significant levels of distress.
The findings lead to the formalisation of two hypotheses: (i) colour obsessions and phobias in individuals with ASD are related to an unusually strong ability to associate colours with entities; (ii) colour obsessions are related to hyposensitivity, and colour phobias to hypersensitivity, in the affected regions of ...
Many autistic people have intense and highly-focused interests, often from a fairly young age. These can change over time or be lifelong. It can be art, music, gardening, animals, postcodes or numbers. For many younger children it's Thomas the Tank Engine, dinosaurs or particular cartoon characters.
While many children with autism feel averse to hugging, some children with autism like to be hugged. Some children can swing the opposite way and want so many hugs that they feel hug deprived when they aren't getting enough.
Many autistic people experience hypersensitivity to bright lights or certain light wavelengths (e.g., LED or fluorescent lights). Certain sounds, smells, textures and tastes can also be overwhelming. This can result in sensory avoidance – trying to get away from stimuli that most people can easily tune out.
In fact, research has shown that autism symptoms tend to peak around the ages of 2-3 years old. During this time, children with autism may struggle with language development, social interaction, and behavior. They may have difficulty communicating their needs and understanding the needs of others.
A child with level 1 autism may understand and speak in complete sentences, but have difficulty engaging in back-and-forth conversation. Children with ASD level 1 experience some inflexibility of behavior, like difficulty switching between tasks, staying organized, and planning.
People with autism tend to have insomnia: It takes them an average of 11 minutes longer than typical people to fall asleep, and many wake up frequently during the night. Some people with the condition have sleep apnea, a condition that causes them to stop breathing several times during the night.
Literal thinking in a child with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) goes far beyond the concrete thinking that is associated with young kids or learning disabled children. It results from the underlying communication disorder, which makes them unable to understand the shifting meaning of words in changing situations.
Many autistic children have intense interests towards their favourite toys and topics. These obsessive interests include collecting and being attached to objects or toys; having a narrow preoccupation with a subject such as trains.