Mono-processing
According to the number of senses working at a time they can be classified into 'Multi-Track' versus 'Mono'-Processing (Williams) or "being singly channeled" (Lawson).
Most people use their senses simultaneously. When they are hearing something, they are still aware of what they see and feel emotionally and physically, because they are 'multi-tracked'. To avoid overload of sensory information, many autistic individuals use only one modality to process information consciously. Though subconsciously a great amount of information may still get in and lead to 'accumulation of unknown knowing' (Williams, 1996).
Mono-processing means that a person focuses on one sense, for example, sight, and might see every minute detail of the object. However, while his vision is on, the person might lose the conscious awareness of any information coming through other senses. Thus, while the person sees something, he does not hear anything, and does not feel touch, etc. When the visual stimulus fades out, the sound could be processed, but then the sound is the only information the person is dealing with (i.e. disconnected from sight). As the person focuses on only one modality at a time, the sound may be experienced louder (hypersensitivity) because it is all the person focuses on.
Wendy Lawson believes that central coherence (the ability to draw connections together from the 'big picture') can only occur with least effort, when one has access to the big picture via many different channels (polytropism). Wendy argues that in monotropism where all the attention is gathered into one place, there is an extreme central coherence but of different type. 'Monotropic central coherence' excludes information from outside the attention channel (Lawson, Ph.D. Thesis).
For people who work in 'mono', to process the meaning of what they are listening to while being touched may be to have no idea where they were being touched or what they thought or felt about it. To process the location or special significance of being touched while someone is showing them something means that they saw nothing but meaningless color and form and movement (Williams, 1996). The person may either be in a constant state of switching the channels or remain on one sensory channel and be unaware of what is going on in the other sensory modalities.
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