The effort test: indifference vs distraction
When something looks like 'not paying attention', check whether effort was even attempted. Autistic indifference means no interest, so no effort goes in at all; ADHD inattention means effort starts but can't be sustained — the person engages and then gets pulled away. Same surface, different fix.
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‘Inattention’ is a surface description that hides two very different processes, and telling them apart changes what helps. In autistic indifference there is simply no interest, so no effort is initiated — the task never gets engaged in the first place, and pressing harder or adding rewards does nothing because there was never an attempt to sustain. In ADHD inattention the effort IS attempted: the person starts trying to manage the task, but it becomes unmanageable and they get distracted, sidetracked, and move from one thing to the next. The test is to look for the attempt. Did they begin and drift off (ADHD distractibility — supports that respond to interest, deadlines, novelty, body doubling and reducing friction will help)? Or did they never start because it held no interest for them (autistic indifference — the lever is meaning and genuine relevance, not motivation hacks)? Misreading indifference as ADHD distraction leads to piling on reminders and incentives that miss entirely; misreading distraction as indifference leads to writing someone off as ‘not caring’ when they were trying the whole time.
