Hyperfocusing as a dimension of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Adults with ADHD show strong, medication-proof hyperfocusing that you can measure with a brief scale.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ozel-Kizil et al. (2016) asked adults with ADHD and healthy adults to fill out a new Hyperfocusing Scale.
The team compared scores from diagnosed outpatients against people without ADHD.
They also checked if taking stimulant meds changed the scores.
What they found
Adults with ADHD scored much higher on hyperfocusing than controls.
Meds did not matter: stimulant-naive and stimulant-treated patients looked the same.
Hyperfocusing appears to be a stable trait in adult ADHD.
How this fits with other research
Groen et al. (2020) seems to disagree. They found no overall hyperfocus gap between diagnosed adults and matched controls once ADHD traits were held steady.
The clash is about sampling. Tugba studied clinic outpatients with firm diagnoses. Yvonne mixed healthy adults who simply scored high on ADHD traits with a smaller clinical group.
Gomez et al. (2021) adds that classic hyperactivity items work poorly in adults, so new lenses like hyperfocusing may help sharpen assessment.
Why it matters
You now have a quick scale that flags intense, long-lasting focus bouts in adult clients. Add it to your intake packet. Expect high scores even from medicated clients, and plan goals around both distractibility and hyper-focus traps such as losing track of time or skipping meals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) suffer not only from inability to focus but also from inability to shift attention for events that trigger their interests. This phenomenon is called "hyperfocusing". Previous literature about hyperfocusing is scarce and relies mainly on case reports. The study aimed to investigate and compare the severity of hyperfocusing in adult ADHD with and without psycho-stimulant use. ADHD (DSM-IV-TR) patients either psycho-stimulant naive (n=53) or on psycho-stimulants (n=79) from two ADHD clinics were recruited. The control group (n=65) consisted of healthy university students. A socio-demographic form, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Wender-Utah Rating Scale, the Adult ADHD Self- Report Scale and the Hyperfocusing Scale were applied to the participants. There was no difference between total Hyperfocusing Scale and Adult ADHD Self- Report Scale scores of two patient groups, but both have higher scores than controls (p<0.001). Hyperfocusing is higher in adult ADHD and there was no difference between stimulant-naive patients or patients on stimulants. Hyperfocusing can be defined as a separate dimension of adult ADHD.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.09.016