What Is a "Stereotyped Pattern of Interest"

Post Reply New Topic

Autistics or people with AS usually do have a lot of interests but spend the most time on just one. I'm trying to juggle my interest in neuroscience with music with astronomy with physics with sci-fi. It's not really working. Videogames hardly get any attention from me. They're just not stimulating enough.

Thanks for sharing your opinions. Here are two more examples, please give me your opinion if this sounds like it qualifies.

An adolescent / teenage boy loves computer programming. He gets busted by his parents at night for programming instead of getting sleep. In school he's writing computer code on paper when he has spare time (choir practice, lunch, etc.).

A young boy wants to read every Piers Anthony novel. His Christmas wish-list is a list of every novel not in his collection, nothing else. Hides a flashlight under his pillow so he can read at night despite getting in trouble when caught. During class, he hides novels inside the text book to look like he's studying the text book but is reading the novel instead. In between classes he's reading while walking the halls to class, using periphial vision to avoid bumping into people or falling down the stairs. He's the son of the church musician so during Sunday service is in the organ balcony hidden in a corner reading Piers Anthony.

Stereotyped just means you apply it to many different situations regardless of the individual characteristics of the situation. It might not be appropriate, it might be meaningless, but you apply it none the less, just like you do with stereotypes about people. It's a scripted behavior or sentence that might not have much to do with the reality.
The phrase or behavior becomes associated with the person. It's like slang words or dialects. You might call them stereotyped ways of speaking. When someone speaks in their own language they made up on a daily basis, you could call it a stereotyped way of speaking. A stereotyped pattern of interest is one that becomes habitual regardless of circumstance. You become stuck in a stereotype and that stereotype is what people think of when they think of you.