Can an Autistic have a special interest without knowing a whole lot about the topic?
Or is expertise in the topic a requirement for being a genuine “special interest”?
When I was 12 I developed what my family deemed an obsessive interest in sharks.
This was long before the Internet, where everything known about sharks can easily be found even by a child.
This was long before cable TV; we had only like five channels.
There was no Amazon from which to purchase all sorts of shark themed products. I had only one shark themed item: a tee shirt. Oh, and I also had John Williams’ iconic soundtrack.
There was no online community with which to discuss sharks.
Thus, my knowledge of sharks, at age 12, didn’t scream “special interest” at all. However, my hyperfixation most certainly did. And it was frowned upon.
In autism literature, a special interest is often described as an intense fascination with a topic that leads the Autist to learn all they can about it, quickly amassing knowledge at expert level.
But this isn’t the be-all, end-all definition of a special interest in autism.
There are other ways a topic of intrigue can land in autistic special interest territory.
Another thing we must consider is the availability of information related to that interest.
So when I was 12, that availability was very poor.
But today, we have YouTube channels and Reddit subs devoted to sharks. There are shark websites and shark online forums. Any good-size library will have all kinds of books on sharks. We even have shark cartoons.
And is there any product on Amazon that doesn’t have a shark themed version? I have several shark tee shirts with nifty sayings plus leggings with sharks all over them.
There are shark bedspreads, fidget poppers, backpacks, jewelry, coloring books, pillows, party supplies and even skark-making kits that come in a box. It’s just nuts.
Yet all I had as a tween and teen were that one tee shirt, the soundtrack, a few books, a few tabloid magazines about shark attacks and a prized collection of cut-out shark related articles from newspapers that I kept in a shoebox.
Based on my possessions back then, one wouldn’t exactly say this was a special interest.
But it WAS. Because a special interest in autism is also an internal experience.
It isn’t necessarily only about how much paraphernalia you’ve purchased or how much time you spend on Reddit subs dedicated to the subject of hyperfixation.
I did all I could do with the very limited availability at hand. But inside, I was forever yearning for so much more. I thought way too much about shark attacks. Way too much.
It’s staggering to speculate about how much knowledge on sharks I would’ve amassed had the Internet and YouTube been around when I was 12 to 15.
I also have to believe I would’ve spent crazy amounts of time on r/TheSharkAttack Files, and r/Sharks, had Reddit been around during that time!
Thus, we can’t say something is or is not a special interest based on how much time someone spends with the topic.
In autism, it seems that a special interest could be better identified by just how much the Autistic thinks about the topic rather than how much they know about it.
The special interest may also come in the form of collecting objects and organizing them, rather than studying up on them.
I once had a special interest in a certain kind of window shade. However, I had never had any interest in learning how they were made, where they came from, how many homes had them, etc.
I just wanted to view them (had no choice to but afar, as it had never dawned on me to ask my mother, “Are their houses I can go inside of and pull on their shades?”).
I was nine at the time; never occurred to me to ask, “Can you take me to a store where shades are sold so I could play with them?”
Thus, this special interest didn’t seem so “special,” though when I told my sister of my autism diagnosis in 2022 and asked her to recollect any obsessions I’d had as a child, she immediately texted, “the window shades.”
Often, autistic people keep their special interests to themselves due to fear of being branded as odd or weird.
But remember, the internal experience is very important with a hyperfixation.
A Deep Dive in Shallow Water
A special interest may also have limited information.
For example, there’s only so much information out there on the topic of birds crashing into windows and dying.
There’s only so much information about death by wood chipper — about three per year in the U.S. (Ask me how I know)
It took me only a few weeks to exhaust the one about the birds. The one with the wood chipper deaths lasted a few years, though.
Now, a special interest in, say, the great white shark, would have ongoing new information to read up on, as this species is always the subject of intense study by scientists.
A special interest can also take the form of an event.
For example, when I was 10 I developed an intense fascination with a missing boys’ case – two young cousins who went missing and were later found murdered – in Cleveland, Ohio.
How much more could I have read up on this case than the newspaper articles that I eagerly hunted for every day?
Sometimes a special interest takes the form of viewing something.
In autism literature, the example of watching videos of insects fighting has been named as an example.
The Autist may not care about the lifecycle of insects, what they eat, how they mate, how long they live, where they live, what feeds on them, but will spend as much time as they can watching them fight.
They couldn’t tell you the name of the insects they watch battle it out, but it’s still a special interest.
Their deep dive is in the form of watching all the videos they can find on this topic, rather than absorbing data about insects and being able to rattle off trivia about them.
On the other hand, someone may know “everything there is to know” about ants, yet have no interest in viewing ants fighting.
So remember, it doesn’t require expert knowledge of a topic in order for that topic to qualify as a special interest in an Autistic.
What’s more relevant is how excited the Autist gets when they see the topic of their fascination, or how excited they get when the latest in their collection arrives at their door and how much time they spend examining that new addition.
Another telltale feature, though not a requirement, for a true special interest is a habit of info dumping.
This means talking about the subject to anyone who’ll listen, including at inappropriate times or to people who clearly are bored with the topic.
Some Autistics won’t talk much unless you ask them about their special interest. In fact, this is a recommended way to get a “hardly talking” autistic individual to open up.
Special interests in Autism Spectrum Disorder are about intensity, depth and emotional/mental focus. These can easily apply in the absence of being a walking encyclopedia on the topic.
