School as a Polytropic Environment: The Impact on Monotropic Minds

A Perspective from my Experience of Processing Mutism

Author – Claire Browne

PM – Processing Mutism

Note: For those of you who have not read my previous blogs in the series , Processing Mutism can be defined as a loss of speech due to excessive processing demands. In the first blog, I mentioned that I experienced PM in secondary school because my attention was being pulled in too many directions. This is the topic I explore further below.

What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think about school? Now for me and many other members of my neurokin, the immediate answer is chaos! This is hardly surprising given that many mainstream school environments (particularly secondary) work against our neurology, expecting us to switch tasks seamlessly, navigate crowded corridors whilst inadvertently inhaling pungent fumes of your peers’ latest perfume, narrowly avoid getting squashed against the lockers by the weight of your year group, all whilst retaining information on the most mundane of subjects. Attempt at humour aside, many school environments are not suited to autistic neurology, often resulting in frequent overwhelm, experiences of PM like mine, burnout, or a complete inability to attend. School should enable young people to thrive, however the current reality for many young autistic people is that they are just about focusing on surviving in their formative years.

Therefore in this blog in the Processing Mutism series, I will explore why current school settings are not suited to autistic neurology using the theory of monotropism. I will discuss in detail what being monotropic means and give examples of how to change the environment and expectations to facilitate and harness the benefits and immersive power of our unique cognitive style.

Initially proposed by autistic researchers Dinah Murray and Wenn Lawson in the early 1990’s, monotropism is an extremely relatable and comprehensive theory of autistic cognition. As eloquently described by autistic science teacher Fergus Murray in the article ‘Monotropism and Me’ ‘ ‘it rests on a model of the mind as an ‘interest system’: we are all interested in many things, and our interests help direct our attention.’ Monotropism suggests that autistic people (and more recently ADHDer’s) have an interest based nervous system focusing our attention and processing resources more intensely on a single or few interests at any one time. Ultimately this leaves fewer processing resources for anything outside of our current attention tunnel and leads to very immersive experiences (flow states). Since I first came across monotropism several years ago, I had never read anything that described me so accurately in my life! This is hugely significant as it is one of the first theories that describes our internal experiences and validates our neurology, being very well accepted and embraced by the wider autistic community.

Our unique monotropic cognitive style underpins everything about autistic experiences from sensory and executive function differences to flow states and our specific communication style. It may be difficult to see how being monotropic affects seemingly unrelated aspects such as communication however another point to note from Fergus Murray is that ‘the monotropic mind tends to expect one thing to follow from another more directly than that. Most autistic people get the hang of metaphors eventually, but many still report the literal meaning of a saying tends to come to mind first, and it takes a moment’s processing to substitute the metaphorical intent. ‘ The implications of being monotropic are so important to highlight as one could be forgiven for thinking that having an interest based nervous system just solely relates to our dedicated interests and periods of hyperfocus, however in this context ‘interest’ can be redefined as anything that captures our attention.

For those of you who are visual thinkers, being monotropic is essentially the difference between looking through a magnifying glass and having a panoramic view of your surroundings. To extend this analogy a little further, if you have a panoramic view you are considered to be polytropic (meaning you can focus your attention across multiple channels of attention at any one time with much less depth). This generalised allocation of energy and attention is exactly what the current school system is designed to accommodate, naturally posing problems for us autistics whose neurology is intended to do the opposite.

School as a Polytropic Environment: The Impact on Monotropic Minds

Constant transitions

I know that switching tasks and being interrupted when trying to achieve a flow state is extremely jarring as the focus of my attention feels like the only thing that exists in the world. Unfortunately, this is a constant source of distress for many monotropic learners in school given the expectations to switch seamlessly between five or sometimes six lessons (not to mention the more subtle transitions such as planning multiple activities for one lesson). What’s the point in trying to focus at all when there is a constant demand to switch attention at any given moment? This is a very logical thought process for many of us, we are natural specialists not generalists. Being monotropic means we need sufficient time, a feeling of safety and space to focus all our precious and powerful processing resources on one given task and being pulled away from our attention tunnels can be destabilising. This is a sentiment further echoed by autistic advocate Kieran Rose in his monotropism video, trying to switch attention tunnels is like ‘pulling the weight of your being out of a gravity well.’ It’s only natural that such intense experiences require transition time, however transitioning between lessons in secondary school usually mean being surrounded by the cacophony of teenager interactions whilst heading to the next classroom. This feels far from safe or restorative for an autistic young person.

Lack of interest-based learning – learning for academic attainment instead of enjoyment

By virtue of being monotropic, our interests pull us in more strongly than most (polytropic) people. This comes with many strengths including often being fast autodidactic learners. It’s such a shame that many autistic young people often have to set aside intrinsically motivating passions that are crucial to mental wellbeing simply because the education system is built upon exam results, external motivation, and league tables. Asking a fellow autistic about one of their passions is one of the greatest joys there is and shows learning is much more meaningful when self-directed. Obviously, I am aware that in our current climate interest based self-directed learning is not possible for the majority of secondary schools given excessive workloads and huge class sizes, however it is a value and practice that would benefit all students regardless of neurology. Take for example, Gecko Community, an autistic led alternative education provider for neurodivergent students. Established with monotropic minds at its core, learning is project and interest based with neurodivergent mentors to guide young people through their exploration of new knowledge. This is a brief example of what works for autistics, however this approach to learning should not be an alternative, but instead the default.

Chaotic and unpredictable sensory environment

When I think back to the main reason why I experienced Processing Mutism in secondary school, the most obvious answer is sensory overload. One contributing factor for me has always been the unnecessary need to fill every available inch of classroom space with distracting visual stimuli. Now I understand my autistic brain through a monotropic lens, this makes total sense. Monotropic brains are intended to focus on one source of stimuli at a time, not hop back and forth between competing noises, smells, sounds and sights. As further explained by Fergus Murray ‘distributing our attention between multiple streams takes effort, and sometimes just doesn’t work at all.’ In the likely event that attempting to perform like a polytropic person doesn’t work, an autistic young person may experience overwhelm due to monotropic split. As mentioned in my first blog of this series, monotropic split is a term coined by autistic advocate Tanya Adkin and can be defined as the ‘monotropic mind is having to split its attention and give more mental energy and attention than it has available to be able to withstand the environment it is in and remain safe.’

In order to avoid such overwhelm, stimming is a useful tool to enable an autistic young person to focus on one controlled, predictable input (often in the form of movement, sounds or fidget objects) and drown out multiple overlapping information channels. No child or young person regardless of neurology can be expected to take in information or learn if first and foremost they do not feel safe or well regulated. Stimming is an innate and powerful means of self-regulation (it serves many other purposes too – such as autistic joy!) and should be accepted and encouraged to support the wellbeing of all school students, particularly those of us who are autistic.

Vague communication

As mentioned above, being monotropic influences our communication style. Examples include:

Not using eye contact in order to focus our attention on the content of your words
Being a very literal thinker – our monotropic brains naturally only infer one interpretation of language as opposed to multiple
Info dumping – due to the intensity of our focus we accumulate essay worthy knowledge about our interests and can’t wait to share it!

Some aspects of our monotropic communication style juxtapose common expectations and methods of teaching in mainstream schools. For example, many autistic people cannot look and listen at someone at the same time, coupled with unclear and spoken task instructions, such expectations are often very confusing and overwhelming for autistic monotropic learners.

I hope that above I have provided an insight into common aspects of the secondary school experience that do not suit autistic monotropic neurology. Please note that it is usually a combination of all of these factors (and often more) that contribute to monotropic split, overwhelm, burnout and other distress responses.

Learning Differently: Supporting Monotropic Students

Below I will provide some suggestions of how to change the school environment and expectations to facilitate our cognitive style:

Recognise and validate that coping with multiple information channels is hard and uses a lot of energy.
Incorporate project and more broadly interest-based learning – not just as an extension of other content but, if possible, dedicate specific days or weeks to explore student’s passions. Maybe as an alternative or addition to PSHE days?
Do not force group working – team working is a useful skill but not at the cost of regulation. Alone working can be much more productive and meaningful for many of us.
If you really want to get to know your autistic student, ask about passions!
If possible, allocate double lessons to particular topics – this could enable your autistic student more time to build up momentum and get into flow states.
Only plan one or two activities for each lesson – this will reduce the processing demands and task switching required
Reduce visual clutter – remove unnecessary wall displays, posters in classrooms etc
Accept and encourage stimming
Recognise and celebrate autistic monotropic strengths – such as hyperfocus, specialist knowledge, attention to detail, determination, our autodidactic nature, the list is infinite and unique to every autistic student!
Always offer instructions in both written and spoken form to support processing.
Reduced timetable

Please be aware that the above suggestions are merely examples of how to facilitate monotropic learners, even if just a few aspects are incorporated to everyday teaching and the school environment more widely this could have a huge positive impact on an autistic student’s experience of education.

Finally to quote American psychologist and author Dr Ross Greene:

‘Kids do well IF they can.’

References:

Me and Monotropism: A Unified Theory of Autism (2018)

Monotropic Split – (Tanya Adkin 2022)

Monotropism website

Gecko Community website – alternative education provider for neurodivergent students

Dr Ross Greene: ‘Kids do well IF they can’ video (2022)

If you want to learn more about Monotropism and autistic learning – check out these four articles by Nanny Aut in Inside Aut on Autistic Village:

Building Super-Highways – Why Monotropism Works for Autistics

Learning to play. No. Playing to learn.

Be SKEPtical When Teaching Autistics – Safety, Knowledge Structures, Executive Function and Processing