| Core pattern | A persistent pattern of attention regulation and/or hyperactivity–impulsivity that begins in development and affects functioning across relevant settings. | A developmental pattern involving social communication and interaction, together with restricted or repetitive patterns, interests, routines or sensory experiences. | Fear, worry, apprehension or avoidance that can become persistent, difficult to control or disproportionate to the situation. |
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| Attention | Attention may be hard to direct or sustain, especially for low-interest tasks, while highly engaging activities can hold focus intensely. | Attention may organize around focused interests, details, predictability or sensory information; shifting can be effortful. | Attention may be captured by threat, uncertainty, possible mistakes, body sensations or what could go wrong. |
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| Social situations | Missed cues may follow distraction, impulsive responding, working-memory demands or difficulty tracking a fast interaction. | Social communication may be experienced or expressed differently, and interpreting unwritten expectations can require conscious effort. | Social understanding may be intact while fear of judgment, embarrassment or harm leads to monitoring, hesitation or avoidance. |
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| Change and transitions | Transitions can be hard when stopping a rewarding activity, estimating time, remembering the next step or re-engaging attention. | Change can disrupt predictability, established routines, sensory regulation or an expected sequence. | Change can amplify uncertainty and anticipated negative outcomes, even when the new task itself is manageable. |
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| Restlessness or repetitive action | Movement may support alertness, release energy or occur with difficulty inhibiting an immediate response. | Repetitive movement or action may support regulation, expression, predictability, pleasure or sensory needs. | Pacing, fidgeting, checking or reassurance-seeking may reduce tension temporarily or respond to feared outcomes. |
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| Sensory experience | Distraction or stimulation-seeking can make sounds, movement or visual input especially relevant to attention. | Hyper- or hypo-reactivity and sensory interests can form a meaningful part of the developmental profile. | Heightened arousal can increase sensitivity to sensations or make ordinary sensations feel threatening. |
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| Worry and avoidance | Avoidance can follow repeated difficulty, overwhelm, low task reward, time demands or concern about another unsuccessful attempt. | Avoidance can protect against sensory overload, unpredictable demands, communication strain or an environment that does not fit the person’s needs. | Avoidance often reduces fear or uncertainty in the short term and can reinforce the feared pattern over time. |
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| Emotional regulation | Emotions may rise quickly when inhibition, frustration tolerance, working memory or shifting demands are taxed. | Distress may build with sensory load, unexpected change, communication mismatch, sustained masking or depleted regulation capacity. | Emotional intensity may follow anticipated threat, uncertainty, physical arousal or persistent worry. |
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| Masking and compensation | A person may rely on intense effort, urgency, reminders, overpreparation or others’ structure to conceal executive-functioning difficulty. | A person may script, imitate, suppress, rehearse or consciously monitor social and sensory responses, sometimes at substantial cost. | A person may rehearse, overprepare, seek reassurance or appear highly controlled while managing significant internal fear. |
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| Development and course | Evidence is expected in childhood, although demands or later independence may make the impact clearer over time. | Features originate in development, even when they become more visible later or have been compensated for. | Anxiety can emerge at many points and may fluctuate with stress, health, experiences and environment. |
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