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Many autistic people engage in one or more forms of repetitive behavior. In fact, it is one of the three categories of impairments required for a diagnosis according to the DSM-IV. Repetitiveness may include perseveration on a special interest, stereotpical body movements ("stimming") or other compulsive behaviors, as well as the following of rigid routines.
Self-stimulatory (stereotypical) behavior, often called "stimming", involves repetitive motor movements, such as rocking, hand-flapping or finger-flicking. These behaviors are presumed to have a sensory function, in that they help an autistic regulate their sensory experiences. Some autistics will stim when they have too little sensory input, while others will stim when they are overloaded. Stimming, when it impairs an autistic's functioning, can be reduced by teaching a person a more socially acceptable alternative or by teaching a person to stim in private. However, there is no reason why stimming should be eliminated altogether. In fact, many non-autistics engage in some form of repetitive motor behavior, too, such as constantly clicking a ballpen. This may be annoying, but is rarely a clinical concern.
I myself have several repetitive behaviors that do not involve stimming. When I still lived with my parnets, I used to check my alarm clock at least 30 times a night to make sure it was on. Needless to say it cost me quite a bit of sleep. When I lived alone, I would go through the house many times to check whether the lights were really out - and I also had to check the alarm clock, whether my window was open, unused power supplies turned off, door locked and central heating off. However, this is one of the issues - especially the compulsive behaviors when I lived alone - about which I'm not sure whether they are "typically autistic" or related to the stress I dealt with at the time.
Some autistics have one or more special intersts that they are constantly obsessing over. A subgroup of these people keep talking about their special topic, whether other people are interested or not. Examples could be astronomy, train schedules, medieval history or video games. I don't have a big perseveration - I may have many mini-perseverations (that is, topics that take up most of my time for a couple of weeks and then change), and when interested in something, I do tend to focus on a more restricted part of it than most people -, and I don't tend to talk about my special interests much. For those who do, it sometimes helps to set specific times when they can talk about their interests, so that others will not need to listen to endless monologues about Hungarian politics when they are bored. Of cours, finding a community of people who share their interest, is also a possibility. Setting limits on time spent on the interest without bothering others is, in my opinion, only useful when either the interest is causing the autistic harm (eg. someone so obsessed with weapons that it causes misconduct), or when time spent on the interests takes time away from employment, homework, chores or other necessary activities. Just because most peopl ehave more than one interest, doesn't mean an autistic is "wrong" for having only one - in fact, if used to their advantage, some autistics have been able to make a career out of a restricted special interest.
Another possible problem is the tendency to keep asking the same questions over and over again. This happens especially when I am in a lot of stress and dealing with an unclear situation. This happened a lot when I was preparing to move to Nijmegen, and is happening again now that I'm in the psychiatric hospital in hopes of finding new placement. One reason for repetitive questioning is pretty logical, although most NTs I know don't see it: if you just didn't answer the question, why would you expect me to stop asking it? Many people, after all, say vague things like "We will discuss it later" or "That is not a problem at all" and expect this to be a satisfactory answer. However, suppose you called tech support with a computer problem, and the person on the other end of the line answered you like this. Would you placidly hang up and stop repeating your concern? I hope you wouldn't. Then let's assume that you did repeat your concern, but the tech support person who spoke to you the first time, wrote a note to his colleagues saying: "Mr. X called with a computer problem. I discussed it with him, but he did not accept my response and kept on bugging me with questions. Please ignore him." What would you think of the tech support company if you were treated like this? Add to this the fact that many autistics can't deal with vague terms like "later" or "somehow" and perceive certain concerns to be problematic because they focus on details that you may not have noticed - an example of which was when the public long-term healthcare insurance agency issued a funding decision that was incorrect by one letter, but the social worker insisted it didn't make a difference (it wasn't a big problem indeed, but it sure did make a difference. Instead of dismissing the autistic's concern and expecting them to stop bugging you with questions, make clear statements (what do you mean by "later", relative or absolute?), and don't dismiss concerns about little details without having checked them out - you just might have made a little mistake.
Another problem is with reptition if I was actually given a clear answer. This may bwe because of processing problems, especially when overloaded. Sometimes, it helps me to write down the answer, so that I won't need to ask the same question multiple times. However, this is not going to work if the question/concern that I'm going to express is (slightly) different from the ones I already have the answers to. For example, when I kept repeating the same questions about my move to Nijmegen over and over again in July, 2007, my support worker made a very clear list of things that would be done in preparation for the move, E-mailed it to me and expected me to stop asking questions about Nijmegen altogether. However, she did not (could not?) answer any of my questions about what would be happenign after the move, and when I came to her with questions about this, the directive "Look on the list I sent you" did not work.