Cognitive Processes in Autism: Repetitive Thinking in Autistic versus Non-Autistic Adults

Repetitive and restricted behaviours are a core feature of autism, and cognition in autistic individuals may also be repetitive and restricted. We aimed to investigate the relationship between repetitive behaviours and repetitive thinking. We predicted that autistic people would experience more repetitive, perseverative, visual and negative cognition than controls. We predicted that repetitive thinking would be associated with repetitive behaviours in the autistic participants. We recruited autistic (n = 54) and control (n = 66) participants who completed measures of insistence on sameness and obsessive-compulsive behaviours. Participants then took part in 5 days of descriptive experiencing sampling, recording their thoughts when a random alarm sounded. Consistent with our hypothesis, autistic participants reported more repetitive thinking. Contrary with our other hypotheses, autistic participants reported equivalent frequency of perseveration, visual thoughts and negative thoughts to non-autistic participants. Moreover, participants who reported more obsessive thinking reported more repetitive behaviour (insistence on sameness), but there was no such relationship between repetitive thinking and behaviour. Autistic participants who reported more repeated thoughts in the descriptive experience sampling had significantly lower obsessive thinking scores. We conclude that anxiety focused cognitions may drive insistence on sameness behaviours, and that the relationship between repetitive cognition and behaviour is complex and warrants further investigation.