# 3.2 Attentional Modulation and Cognitive Inertia

## 3.2 Attentional Modulation and Cognitive Inertia

Another key element of the model is cognitive inertia: the mental effort required to redirect focus once a contextual map is underway. This inertia can be understood as a structural feature of attentional networks. The frontoparietal control network, responsible for task switching and adaptive focus, often exhibits atypical connectivity in autistic individuals—particularly in its coordination with the salience network and sensory processing regions.

Research by Uddin et al. (2016) demonstrates reduced functional connectivity between the frontoparietal network and the salience network in autistic individuals, directly contributing to the increased cognitive cost of attentional shifting. When a mental model is already expanding from a fixed anchor, interruption requires a full reset: disengaging from the current trajectory, discarding partially formed context, and establishing a new internal reference point. Rather than indicating executive dysfunction, this inertia reflects a structural inefficiency tied to coherence preservation—not control failure.

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