Both personally and professionally, I have been interested in learning more about the obsessions/ affinities/ passions of children with autism. It seems like such a common phenomenon; I know so many children with autism who have grown attached to one concept, film/ TV show, object or set of objects. For Quentin, it is corporate logos, and that passion does not seem to cease. I want to learn more about these passions, because from an educational standpoint, they seem like a natural jumping-off point for teaching kids with autism.
So I dug into the research this week and came up with a study that introduces me to yet another term to describe the kind of obsession/ passion/ affinity that comes from autism spectrum disorders: Circumscribed Interests. I kind of like it. It’s clinical-sounding, but it seems to get to the point more than the term “interest” alone.
The research was done by Ami Klin et al. at the Yale Child Study Center in 2007. The researchers asked parents of 96 children and adolescents diagnosed with high functioning autism to fill out a survey indicating particular areas of intense interest. Parents could indicate more than one intense interest, if that the was the case for their child. Then parents were asked how that child demonstrated a knowledge or passion for the topic.
Results indicated that of the 96 individuals in the sample, 72 of them displayed intense interests in the preschool years, and 85 of them did so in the elementary school years. In other words, circumscribed interests are the norm, and not exception, for children with autism. Over 250 different circumscribed interests were uncovered among these high-functioning ASD individuals. (I was pleased to see that “logos” are listed as one of them!)
In addition, researchers coded the topics of interest to see how those interests are pursued, into 8 categories:
- Facts/ verbal memory and learning
- Facts and activities/ visual memory and learning
- Sensory behaviors
- Math
- Classifying/ ordering information
- Dates and time
- Hoarding
- Letters and numbers
Results also show that children’s behaviors rarely occurred in isolation. That is, one interest could cover several of these categories. As the researchers noted, “This pattern suggests that children may exhibit multiple types of behaviors associated with special interests rather than focusing on just one aspect of their topics of interest.”
I find it interesting that researchers pulled apart the interests to uncover the commonalities among the subjects. Clearly, facts/ verbal memory of learning are the most common category. But it also reminds me that this study was conducted with children who have “high functioning” autism, and that term is most commonly used to describe highly verbal individuals with ASD. (The term is never defined in this paper; the “high functioning” term seems to be based on a score the children receive on a diagnostic test.) I cannot help but wonder why “lower functioning” autistic individuals were not included in this; after all, the subject did not need to speak in order to have their parents fill out a survey! The lack of explanation is a little infuriating. Especially since I would hypothesize that the category involving verbal memory might be as significant if this group was included.
There are other limitations to this study. For example, out of the 96 participating families, there were only 5 females with ASD. Of course, we all know that boys are more likely to have the diagnosis (5 boys to every 1 girl), but for research like this I believe that it’s important to look at gender differences. Future studies should pay more attention to the female autism population, too – even if the population is not as large.
The researchers point out another limitation in their paper: They did not use a control group. In the past, some researchers have used control groups of typical children or even children with other diagnoses (such as OCD or Tourette’s Syndrome) as a source of comparison. The authors felt that the circumscribed interests in children with autism are clinically different than the obsessions or compulsions of other disorders, and therefore there is no equal control group. I agree with this explanation. (I just wish their data set was more inclusive.)
Personally, I am also a little dismayed that there was no category that represented visual imagery or visually repeated motions. For example, I know of a few children (including Quentin) who love elevators, and watching sliding doors open and close in department stores. And there’s the stereotype of the autistic kid spinning toy car wheels over and over. Maybe these categories were left out due to the fact their study considered only “high functioning autistic individuals”; but I see many of the interests listed could fall into this category, such as: clocks, trains, and deep-fat fryers. (I am not kidding. Deep-fat fryers is one of the interests listed. It sort of makes the logo thing seem a lot more manageable!) With Temple Grandin’s assertion that many people with autism are visual learners, I’m not sure why a more visual category was not included.
Despite my criticisms, this study is a great jumping-off point for future research. We now have another term – “Circumscribed Interests” – as well as a sense of most children choose to behave around these interests. From there, new educational tools and methods can be considered as a way of motivating children with ASD to learn more difficult tasks.
Klin, A., Danovitch, J. H., Merz, A. B., & Volkmar, F. R. (2007). Circumscribed interests in higher functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders: An exploratory study. Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 32(2), 89-100.