Originally Posted by DeeDee
Originally Posted by Mk13
Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think it's as much about attention span as it is about simple interest. They are interested = they pay attention, they are not interested = they couldn't care less.

IME attention also has a social component. Often an NT little kid, shown something with enthusiasm by an adult or a peer, will become interested not because of the intrinsic interest of the item, but because of a social impulse to share the interests of others.

Obviously, some people are more other-directed and some are more inner-directed-- but for a person with autism, the impulse to be interested *in order to share a social experience* is often just not there. So intrinsic interest can become the only kind that's operating.

DeeDee

All true. Though, I think in our case a lot of the issues are genes. I remember how I found kids around me very "weird" to want to pay attention to things and people that I found utterly boring. I didn't understand my feelings back then but I learned to cope with them by always insisting on sitting in the front row right in front of the teacher so I could try my hardest to pay attention. Anything beyond front row and I'd spend all day with my mind wondering around, while drawing little evergreen trees all over my notebooks! lol