A narrow topic is a topic you're not interested in

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One of my "narrow" interests is eyes. It doesn't feel narrow to me at all, but I know it seems narrow to other people. Geology and marine biology seem like narrow interests to me, but I know they don't seem narrow to other people. I believe broad and narrow is a very relative term to people.

Know what you mean. My interests are narrow by most others' definitions, but virtually everything else on the planet seems narrow to me.

I thought it had more to do with few people being interested instead of a lot if people being interested in whatever.

A "narrow" interest, to me, would be an interest only in the retina of the eye, rather than an interest in the entire eye.

Or in interest only in igneous rock, rather than the entirety of geology itself.

I find that even the most narrow interests tend to widen over time - the more you discover, the more you realise how much more there is to discover. Each deeper understanding of the subject reveals ever greater levels of previously hidden detail - I would say that this is precisely what defines an "interesting" subject for me.

Personally, I think Ezra has said it just right. When most people accuse us of having "narrow" interests, they very often just mean that our interests are not "popular" - and that is not the same thing at all! I know plenty of NT people that I think of as having narrow and/or trivial interests - why are they a fan of only that particular sports team? only that one genre of music? only one particular kind of super-hero movie? Those can all be equally narrow interests - but they are popular, so attract much less criticism.

Having narrow interests means that you're only interested in a few specific things and not interested in anything else.

I don't feel that my interests are narrow at all. It's just that most average people couldn't care less about them. I actually have an enormous amount of curiosity and like many things.

Maybe I don't fit the diagnostic criteria in that way. I'm interested in certain fields of study that include many other things that interest me. So I like anthropology, which is related to a love of ethnic foods, and related to psychology, and related to liking antiques, and linguistics is a subfield of anthropology.

Same with biology. But then I like lots of other things. My special interests are basically anything I like enough to get obsessed with for a period of time, however long that may be. And I never do anything halfway. If I like something, I can't stop doing it.

I've also heard it's also related to social behavior. If someone is interested in animals in general and only talks about animals it's considered a narrow interest. If someone is very interested in cats, but can easily talk about other stuff it might not be considered a narrow interest. As I'm treating my symptoms I still notice my interests and obsessions, I'm just socially connected enough to talk about other stuff.

Really, as I think about it, I think of "animals" as being a broad interest, and a specific animal to be a narrow interest.

Narrow doesn't necessarily have to mean "bad." The intense focus on narrow interests, at times, has led to great inventions.

Isaac Newton had many narrow interests, including the idea of gravity. Without his intense focus on the "narrow" interest of gravity, we wouldn't have Newton's theories; by extension, we probably would not have Einstein's theories, either.

The point is that having narrow interests can be useful--especially when one is able to bypass those interests at times, and be interested in other things.

Alt-text: "Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit."

My interests have always been narrow enough to just fall short of any practical application. That is how I define narrow interest.

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31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

I think narrow interest is subjective. If it's all you do, then people will call it narrow. Like if all you do is play video games and read about them and watch videos of them more than you do anything else, people will call it narrow.

I don't think mine are narrow because I like to read a lot of things and look lot of things up online. When I was a kid I would say mine were more narrow because I wouldn't look anything up online unless it was about certain things. Like if I went to the encyclopedia, it had to be about London. If I went to a bookstore, I would try and find anything London related rather it was maps or books so I would go to the travel section. When I was obsessed with 101 Dalmatians, I would try and find dalmatian books and on the movie or TV show. I wouldn't try and find other books to read. People might call that narrow because it was about one thing. I was focused on one dog breed, one city, one movie.