Hyperfocus: The ADHD Superpower

Abstract

Imagine playing a video game that is so fun you do not realize someone is calling your name. Everyone can probably think of a time like that—when you were so focused that you did not notice things happening around you. For some people, this feeling of deep attention, called hyperfocus, happens really often. In our research, we first developed a way to measure hyperfocus. Next, we tested whether people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) hyperfocus more often. ADHD is a condition that can make it harder to pay attention to things. Despite this, many people with ADHD say that they often hyperfocus. We found that people with ADHD do have higher hyperfocus levels. In this article, we talk about our hyperfocus research, how hyperfocus can be an ADHD superpower, and our next steps toward better understanding hyperfocus and how to harness it.

Full text

NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY
Published: 05 January 2022
doi: 10.3389/frym.2021.625433
HYPERFOCUS: THE ADHD SUPERPOWER
Kathleen E. Hupfeld 1, Tessa R. Abagis 2, Jahla B. Osborne 2, Quynh T. Tran 2and Priti Shah 2*
1Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States
2Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
YOUNG REVIEWER:
ALEXEY
AGE: 11
Imagine playing a video game that is so fun you do not realize
someone is calling your name. Everyone can probably think of a
time like that—when you were so focused that you did not notice
things happening around you. For some people, this feeling of deep
attention, called hyperfocus, happens really often. In our research,
we first developed a way to measure hyperfocus. Next, we tested
whether people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
hyperfocus more often. ADHD is a condition that can make it harder
to pay attention to things. Despite this, many people with ADHD
say that they often hyperfocus. We found that people with ADHD
do have higher hyperfocus levels. In this article, we talk about our
hyperfocus research, how hyperfocus can be an ADHD superpower,
and our next steps toward better understanding hyperfocus and how
to harness it.
WHY FOCUS ON HYPERFOCUS?
Picture yourself watching your favorite TV show or reading an
awesome book. Those activities might cause you to focus very deeply.
ABBREVIATION
ADHD,
attention-deficit/
hyperactivity disorder.
You might not want to stop to eat dinner or go to bed. You might not
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Figure 1
Figure 1
Real examples of
hyperfocus. Each box
contains a quotation
from one of our study
participants with ADHD.
Three of the quotes tell
us about hyperfocus
experiences in dierent
situations, like doing
schoolwork (green),
watching TV (purple),
and working on a
photo project (blue).
The fourth quotation
(orange) tells us about a
person who commonly
hyperfocuses and loses
track of time during
various enjoyable
activities.
hear someone calling your name or realize that your phone is ringing.
You might feel so “in the zone” that you have no clue how much time
has passed! This feeling of very deep attention is called hyperfocus
HYPERFOCUS
A state of heightened,
intense focus, most
likely to occur when
someone is doing an
activity that they find
really fun
and interesting.
(Figure 1).
Anyone can experience hyperfocus, especially if they are doing an
activity that they find really interesting. However, our research team
wanted to know more about hyperfocus because lots of people
with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) say that they
ATTENTION-DEFICIT/
HYPERACTIVITY
DISORDER (ADHD)
A condition that can
cause various
problems, including
trouble paying
attention to certain
things, diculty sitting
for long periods of
time, and a tendency to
act without
thinking first.
experience hyperfocus very often. ADHD causes people to have
trouble focusing their attention on certain things, such as schoolwork,
and may also cause symptoms like impulsiveness or diculty sitting
still. ADHD is common; it aects about 9.4% of kids in the US—so, ∼1
in every 10 kids has ADHD.
Since “deficit” means “not enough of,” it may sound strange that
someone with ADHD can hyperfocus—the name suggests that these
folks do not have enough attention. However, we think that people
with ADHD have plenty of attention; they just have trouble controlling
their attention. That is, people with ADHD have diculty saying, “Okay,
now I am going to focus only on my math homework until it is done.”
They might get distracted by other things. On the flip side, people with
ADHD might also put way too much attention toward something like
beating a video game. They might play for 12 hours straight and totally
forget to eat.
So, we know that people with ADHD can hyperfocus and that they
say hyperfocus happens often for them. Until our research study,
there was no good way to measure hyperfocus. Before our work, only
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Figure 2
Figure 2
Our study methods.
The top half of the
chart shows the steps
we used to create the
hyperfocus
questionnaire. The
bottom half shows how
we used the
questionnaire to test
our hypotheses in
people with and
without ADHD.
one other research group had scientifically tested whether people
with ADHD hyperfocus more than other people do [1]. That group
asked 11 questions and found higher hyperfocus in people with
ADHD compared to people without ADHD. Our study built on that
work [2].
MEASURING HYPERFOCUS: THE ADULT HYPERFOCUS
QUESTIONNAIRE
We designed a hyperfocus questionnaire to measure how often
QUESTIONNAIRE
A set of questions that
gathers information
from people, often as
part of a research study.
people find themselves hyperfocusing in their daily lives (Figure 2). To
design this questionnaire, we first read all the science papers we could
find on hyperfocus. We also interviewed 5 college students with ADHD.
We discovered three important things. First, each of the students with
ADHD said that they often hyperfocus. Second, multiple students told
us that, when they hyperfocus, they lose track of time, and have trouble
stopping the activity. Third, hyperfocus most often occurred during
school, hobbies, and screen time. School included things like working
on a project, writing an essay, or creating computer code. Hobbies
included training for a sports competition, creating art projects, and
writing music. Screen time involved activities like watching TV, playing
video games, and surfing social media sites.
We used this information to write questions about hyperfocus, which
we named the Adult Hyperfocus Questionnaire. The title includes
the word “adult” because the people we interviewed before writing
the questions were over 18 years old (specifically, young adults
ages 20–31).
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Hupfeld et al. Hyperfocus in ADHD
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) The green bars
show the average
hyperfocus scores for
people with ADHD. The
blue bars show the
average hyperfocus
scores for people
without ADHD. The
stars mean that people
with ADHD had higher
hyperfocus scores on
all the scales,
compared to people
without ADHD. (B)
People with more
ADHD symptoms had
higher hyperfocus
scores. Each dot
represents one person.
The green dots indicate
people with ADHD and
the blue dots indicate
people without ADHD.
The green and blue
lines and shading tell us
about the direction and
strength of the
relationship between
ADHD symptoms and
hyperfocus for each
group.
First, we ran a pilot study with our questionnaire. We asked our
PILOT STUDY
A small study that is
done before running a
bigger study. Pilot
studies help determine
whether experiments
are working well and
how many people are
needed for a
bigger study.
questions to 23 people with ADHD and 228 without ADHD. This pilot
study had 2 goals: to make sure people understood our questions,
and to calculate the number of people needed for our big study.
Before doing the big study, we came up with our hypotheses. We
predicted that people with ADHD would have higher hyperfocus levels.
We also predicted that the more ADHD symptoms someone reported,
the higher their hyperfocus score would be.
For our big study, we screened over 3,500 people to find individuals
with a diagnosis of ADHD. We picked 162 people with ADHD
and 210 people without ADHD for the study. These people then
completed our Adult Hyperfocus Questionnaire, on which they
answered a lot of questions about their ability to hyperfocus, their
age, gender, education, and mental health, and their past and current
ADHD symptoms. Once all the questionnaires were complete, we
ran mathematical tests on the data we collected, to see if the
data supported our predictions. These tests could tell us whether
hyperfocus scores were higher for people with ADHD compared to
people without ADHD, and whether having more ADHD symptoms
was related to higher amounts of hyperfocus.
WHAT DID WE FIND?
We found that people with ADHD had higher total hyperfocus
scores (Figure 3A). People with ADHD reported more hyperfocus
when doing schoolwork, hobbies, and screen time activities. They
also had higher “dispositional” hyperfocus, meaning they rated their
personalities as more likely to hyperfocus than did people without
ADHD. We also found that people with more ADHD symptoms had
higher hyperfocus scores (Figure 3B). This was true for both current
ADHD symptoms and for ADHD symptoms participants experienced
when they were children.
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Hupfeld et al. Hyperfocus in ADHD
So, overall, the data we collected supported our hypotheses. People
with ADHD had higher hyperfocus, and more ADHD symptoms related
to higher hyperfocus. Additionally, we achieved our goal of creating
a questionnaire to measure hyperfocus. We think our questionnaire
will be useful for doctors, therapists, and researchers who work with
people who have ADHD.
HYPERFOCUS TO THE RESCUE
Is hyperfocus all bad? Definitely not! Hyperfocus can be a superpower.
It can help folks accomplish incredible things, like finishing a huge
art project or writing a book. Many of our participants said that
hyperfocus makes them very productive. They said they would not
get anything done without hyperfocus. The ability to completely block
out distractions and focus only on your goal can be an amazing talent
and can lead to breathtaking accomplishments. It is no surprise that
many famous people have ADHD, including Olympic gold medalists,
artists, singers, and scientists. Their success may be partially related to
their ability to hyperfocus on their professions. The key to hyperfocus
is learning to control it. If you can harness your focus and use it
to accomplish important things, who knows—you could be a future
Olympian or a prize-winning scientist!
Hyperfocus is not an ocial ADHD symptom, but our results suggest
that maybe it should be. Making hyperfocus an ocial symptom could
help ADHD diagnosis and treatment. For example, if doctors know that
hyperfocus—and not just a lack of attention—is a part of ADHD, they
might be able to diagnose it better, particularly in adults, since ADHD
is more dicult to diagnose in adults than in children.
Hyperfocus relates to neurodiversity. Neurodiversity is the idea
NEURODIVERSITY
the idea that everyone’s
brain is dierent. In
other words, we should
think about conditions
like ADHD as brain
dierences, and not
brain problems. Folks
with ADHD may just
have a unique way of
paying attention—and
sometimes, this can be
a superpower!
that many brain conditions represent brain dierences—not brain
problems. Our research indicates that people with ADHD may not have
an attention deficit, but instead might have a dierent attentional style.
This style includes greater hyperfocus and possibly other strengths, like
more creativity [3]. People with ADHD can thrive in environments that
let them use these strengths eectively. Knowing about hyperfocus
could help doctors and therapists teach people with ADHD how to
harness their hyperfocus. Therapists could help people identify which
situations involve “bad” hyperfocus, like spending way too long playing
a video game, and they could help people seek situations that create
“good” hyperfocus, like completing a big school project. We think it is
important for people with ADHD to have their hyperfocus recognized!
Many people with ADHD report that hyperfocus is a big part of their
lives. But, so far, hyperfocus is not recognized as an ocial part
of ADHD.
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WHAT IS NEXT?
There is still a lot of work to be done before we fully understand
hyperfocus. In the short term, we want to make a shorter version
of our questionnaire, to make it easier to use particularly in children
with ADHD. We would also like to cause hyperfocus, maybe by having
research subjects play a fun video game, while we measure their
performance and brain activity. Additionally, we want to know whether
other characteristics are related to hyperfocus, for example, whether
people with high hyperfocus are also more creative. Further research is
also needed to figure out what brain mechanisms might contribute to
higher hyperfocus levels in ADHD. In the long term, all of this work will
help us better understand hyperfocus and its role in ADHD. This will
ultimately let us help people—especially those with ADHD—harness
their hyperfocus superpowers and do incredible things!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank Dr. Holly White for engaging in many helpful
conversations about our hyperfocus research.
ORIGINAL SOURCE ARTICLE
Hupfeld, K. E., Abagis, T. R., and Shah, P. 2019. Living “in the zone”:
hyperfocus in adult ADHD. ADHD Atten Defic Hyperact Disord.
11:191–208. doi: 10.1007/s12402-018-0272-y
REFERENCES
1. Ozel-Kizil, E. T., Kokurcan, A., Aksoy, U. M., Kanat, B. B., Sakarya, D., Bastug, G., et
al. 2016. Hyperfocusing as a dimension of adult attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder. Res Dev Disabil. 59:351–8. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2016.09.016
2. Hupfeld, K. E., Abagis, T. R., and Shah, P. 2019. Living “in the zone”: hyperfocus in
adult ADHD. ADHD Atten Defic Hyperact Disord. 11:191–208.
doi: 10.1007/S12402-018-0272-Y
3. White, A., and Shah, P. 2006. Uninhibited imaginations: creativity in adults with
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Pers Indiv Di. 40:1121–31.
doi: 10.1016/j.Paid.2005.11.007
SUBMITTED: 03 November 2020; ACCEPTED: 01 December 2021;
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 05 January 2022.
EDITED BY: Julia W. Y. Kam, University of Calgary, Canada
CITATION: Hupfeld KE, Abagis TR, Osborne JB, Tran QT and Shah P (2022)
Hyperfocus: The ADHD Superpower. Front. Young Minds 9:625433. doi: 10.3389/
frym.2021.625433
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CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors declare that the research was conducted in
the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed
as a potential conflict of interest.
COPYRIGHT © 2022 Hupfeld, Abagis, Osborne, Tran and Shah. This is an
open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums
is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited
and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted
academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not
comply with these terms.
YOUNG REVIEWER
ALEXEY, AGE: 11
I am very skilled at science and math. I know a lot about computers and coding. My
favorite pet is a cat (that is what my avatar is). My favorite food is pizza. I like to play
video games such as Fallout, BeamNG.drive, and others.
AUTHORS
KATHLEEN E. HUPFELD
Kathleen E. Hupfeld is a fifth-year applied physiology and kinesiology Ph.D. student
at the University of Florida. Her research looks at brain and behavioral dierences
in older people, astronauts, and folks with neurological dierences like ADHD. She
uses brain imaging, brain stimulation, and dierent types of behavioral tests in her
research. She hopes to one day be a professor with her own neuroscience lab, to
continue studying the brain. In her spare time, she loves to read, paddle board,
SCUBA dive, and hang out with her rescue cat, Yeti.
TESSA R. ABAGIS
Dr. Tessa R. Abagis is a researcher who completed her Ph.D. in cognition and
cognitive psychology at the University of Michigan in 2020. Her research has focused
on how people with ADHD deal with distraction from the outside world and from
their own thoughts. In her work, she has used brain imaging, eye tracking, brain
stimulation, and behavioral tasks.
JAHLA B. OSBORNE
Jahla B. Osborne is a first-year cognition and cognitive neuroscience-psychology
Ph.D., student at the University of Michigan. Her current research focuses on
susceptibility to distraction in people with ADHD. She is also interested in cognitive
training and hopes to incorporate brain imaging into her future research.
QUYNH T. TRAN
Quynh T. Tran is a recent 2021 graduate of the University of Michigan with a
Bachelors of Science degree in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience and
a minor in Gender and Health. She completed a senior honors thesis under the
direction of Dr. Priti Shah where she studied hyperfocus in adults with ADHD and
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received an Honors designation for her work. She is currently in her gap year working
as a medical scribe and will be attending medical school next year.
PRITI SHAH
Dr. Priti Shah is a professor of psychology, information, and education at the
University of Michigan. Her research focuses on higher-level cognition (e.g., thinking,
reasoning, and problem-solving), the brain mechanisms that support these abilities
(e.g., executive functions and attention), and how we can apply this knowledge to
improve educational practices. She has edited 3 volumes and published over 70
articles and chapters. In her spare time, she likes to read, paint, and spend time with
her teenage and adult children. *priti@umich.edu
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