What is A Special Interest?

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How intense does a hobby have to be to qualify as a special interest?

From my perspective, it has to take up the majority of your free time, and leach into other aspects of your life, even if it's just conversations with friends. For instance, I wake up in the morning and one of my interests is always the very first thing on my mind; I write school papers revolving around my interest where I can (spent an entire semester submitting half a dozen or more essays all about autism spectrum disorders, and lectured on it for my teacher in class), and study it in my free time, everything from blogs to academic journal articles. With regard to non-academic interests that it's hard to incorporate into a standard work or school day (like my current interest in the Disney movie Frozen), I spend all the time I'm not using studying ASDs watching youtube clips of the movie, memorising song lyrics, reading fanfics about the characters, or simply rewatching the film. I've had that particular interest for about two weeks now and have already seen the movie four times. I qualify an interest as an obsession on the autistic level when it takes over your thoughts and spare time, even when you have other things you have to be doing. For me it's all-invasive and makes getting on with the rest of life difficult.

it basically seems like a Obsession or an intense hobby, in fact it basically is an obsession, think about it constantly, keeps talking about it, draws or writes about it continuously, and isn't interested in anything else but that interest is a way to technically put it.

Mine is Sonic.

I would be inclined to disagree that we don't understand the meaning of the facts we learn; I for one understand every aspect of all my interests. It would be hard to have a real conversation with someone about the interest if, when they asked what something meant, I couldn't tell them.

Yeah, that part is BS and insulting.
Some people only think something has meaning insofar as it can be used to advance you socially. The facts are interesting for their own sake.

It's more than a hobby that you do for enjoyment.
It's a pattern of mental activity that is consuming.

For whatever reason, those neurons just want to fire in that particular pattern of synaptic connections between neurons. You get stuck there and don't want to think about anything else.
It's like a brain glitch, but it can be a good thing.

Is it not normal for people to spend a lot of time thinking about their interests?

I think about them when I wake up, I think about them all through the day, the whole point of my day is to get chores out of the way in order to get around to hobby time (that's if I don't forget the chores and just skip straight to my hobbies), I think about them whilst I am doing said chores, I think about getting back to them as soon as I've eaten dinner, when it comes to arts and crafts I like to make lists and plan my next projects, I think about them when I am shopping, I read about them on the bus when I am out, heck i read about them walking along the street (or I was the other day, it must have been a good book), I think about them as I go to sleep at night.

I thought this was normal...It's just what my brain likes to do with itself.

I am not sure that is what the poster you quoted meant.

I think they mean fully understanding whatever subject is their special interest. Not that facts can't be interesting in their own rights but it depends on what your aims are. If I develop an interest in Philosophy for example then I want to truly understand the philosophical theories I am studying. Social advancement has nothing to do with it...I want to understand my subject, and in actual fact, deep understanding of a subject can impair social advancement, especially if the people around you don't understand and can't keep up with you.

If on the other hand you just want to memorise facts because they are interesting to you in an of themselves then there is nothing wrong with that either.

It depends on your aim I guess.

I usually seek understanding but can be inclined, now and again, to seek out facts just because it entertains me to do so.

Second Gillberg's Asperger's criteria:

In terms of those criteria, how narrow is narrow enough? I often see people claiming it has to be something extraordinarily quirky such as writing down every statistic relevant to a particular baseball team, but then I go on to read that it can be anything, even a 'normal' interest such as video games.

It REALLY agitates me that there aren't more detailed insights in to the criteria.. it leaves way too much up for assumption and subjectivity.

it is an extreme interest that one has that is not popular.

For me an SI is something that is technically/biologically caused. While it seems, that whyever, autists have troubles filtering information and influences, caused by their brain areas being overlinked/having too less barriers against synapses interacting with each other without sense.

When a certain brain area is often used, then the affected brain area becomes more trained (thats an normal effect that NTs have as well.) So synpasis connected to each other about that topic becomes strenghtened, the nylit coverings of the wires, keeping them safe from other unrelated synapsis influences, get thicker, ...

In the end I think that these typcial SIs that Aspergers/Autists have, simply makes them feel so well, that because of the intense interest in them, these are the only areas of their brain, that are able to function as they should, uninfluenced by unnecessary sensory inputs by being able to dampen these and focus these thoguhts. Because of the intense usage of these interest areas, the skills and abilities in that interest area can even get then they are normally.

removed according to advice.

Last edited by b9 on 29 Jan 2014, 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

removed according to advice.

Last edited by b9 on 29 Jan 2014, 8:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I agree with the previously stated sentiment that it is offensive. I think it's more a matter of finding different or significantly abnormal meaning to things. Hell, I'd say that the posts in this topic support my theory that aspies/autists find more meaning in Special Interests than the average NT finds in the subject. The catch is that we need to. We are known for thinking in narrow, specific, and individualized ways. Because of this relative lack of functional cognitive breadth, we struggle to make the regular piecemeal connections between information and meaning across a variety of subjects and situations like NTs do. The purpose of a special interest is instead to gain a thorough and complete grasp of the information, logic, and meaning of an interest so that we may then try applying larger sets of meaning and logic to other parts of our lives to find useful parallel logics and meanings.

For example, my biggest Special Interest, by a wide margin, is gaming. I can waste hours reading detailed numerical descriptions and experienced reviews of classes and items and abilities on GameFAQs or Wikias. I have many years of gaming under my belt. I use these experiences to get me through much of life. I have learned to think of other parts of my life like parts of a video game. I used to dress in a much more typical aspie fashion (loose fitting, attention diverting, sensory issue centric, same few things forever) until I started thinking of clothing as equipment. I now take much more into consideration when deciding what clothing to buy or wear. I think of clothing as having stats like WRM (warmth), APPL (Looks, fashion, Appeal), CFT (comfort, feel), etc. I plan packing for trips or overnight shifts like gearing up for a level. I need clothing to fit the situation (Ice Resist gear exists both IRL and in many dozens of games xd), enough consumables for the duration of the stage (ample Sam-E, NAC, Focus Factor, and Energy Shots, generally) my primary gear (phone, wallet, keys, sometimes DS/3DS) and any supporting equipment for my primary gear (chargers and games, always back to games x_x). Then I think about my pre-battle gameplay: my in town preparation for heading to Tartarus. For example, Job Interviews (Boss or Hard+ difficulty stages) want Focus Factor with breakfast, then an Energy Shot 45 minutes or so before. They also require clothing with decent PROF (Professionalism) and APPL.

Okay, got out of hand there. How true does this idea ring to you all?


It really has nothing to do with the specific subject. It's about the nature and depth of the interest itself. If could be something as movie autism as baseball players statistics back to the dawn of the game. It could also be a deep and unusual interest in gaming, as I described above. It's just about the interest being deep and thorough and relatively disconnected from an NT POV.