An Interest Based Account (Monotropism theory) explanation of anxiety in Autism & a Demand Avoidance Phenomenon discussion.

Participatory Autism Research Collective (PARC) held an external stream to the Scottish Autism conference recently held in Glasgow on the 08/11/2018 and 09/11/2018. As part of that stream, the entirety of the 09/11/2018 morning was on an Interest Based Account on Autism, more commonly known as Monotropism. I was invited to do a talk on how this theory explains anxiety in autism due, refining the theory to explain Demand Avoidance Phenomenon (Pathological Demand Avoidance). Each speaker was asked to provide a 15 minute talk and then allow a 15 minute discussion including with the speaker doing a plenary. As previous speakers had described an Interest Based Account of Autism (Dinah Murray) and Flow States (Damian Milton), I did not need to go into much depth on the theoretical background. However, I have expanded the original slides, providing more in depth discussion points and explaining the underlying theory to allow anyone to access the slides.