How Do We Support Monotropic Attention with AAC?

I think there's a lot to unpack there, isn't there? And I think First, it's probably worth us considering What are these words monotropic and hyper focus? So when we think about attention profiles and because we learn more and understand more, typically the term hyper focus is kind of associated with an ADHD profile and monotropic attention is associated more with an autism profile.

But generally they're kind of used a bit interchangeably.

But what we think about is with these these kind of profiles of attention is when something grabs someone, The attention that they place on that is like shining this bright, bright torch that's got battery life that goes on forever on that particular topic.

And so that particular activity, that particular sensory experience.

And there is this deep connection with whatever that stimulation is for someone.

And these are the kind of individuals that you might see.

struggling when you go, it's time to go for snack, five, four, three, because they are so immersed in the experience of whatever it is they're doing and you haven't let them finish that experience.

So it's a really important profile.

And in fact, I was at a conference in January and Pete Wormby was speaking and talking about like five tips for education, talking about mainstream and autism.

And one of them was understand monotropism.

Because if you understand it and you can kind of see it, name it, you can support it.

And I think that's something within AAC that's really important, isn't it? Like this parent's talking about that hyper focus.

Like I can see that my child is deeply, truly engaged in the context of dinosaurs and it's bringing them a lot of pleasure.

And so I'm noticing that.

But then the next question is sort of like, how do I support it? Do I step in? Do I not? Like when is it becoming a barrier as opposed to being a nice activity? And that's so...

common isn't it with our particular I think our high-tech AAC users because you get the voice output of these lovely things that they're enjoying

yeah yeah and my first thought is brilliant like if they are hyper-focused um on their AAC fabulous that's kind of like a dream scenario And if they are loving exploring particular pages, there's lots of things that that might be providing for them.

So it might be experiencing that sort of like babble phase that speaking children naturally have.

And that is delightful.

And they're gaining sort of agency over playing with sounds and playing with words and playing with language.

I think sometimes we can think of it.

as they're analyzing the language as well.

Like they're trying to work out what do these words mean? What does this word sound like compared to that word? How can I combine those words? Sometimes if we're lucky, they're having sort of like they're playing with maybe building some phrases.

So there's all sorts of useful things around a child exploring their AAC on their own and giving them opportunities to explore it on their own, I think can be a really good move.

Yeah, certainly.