Hyperfocus

Overview

Hyperfocus is an intense form of mental concentration or visualization that focuses consciousness on a narrow subject, or beyond objective reality and onto subjective mental planes, daydreams, concepts, fiction, the imagination, and other objects of the mind.

Interpretations

From a neurodiversity perspective, hyperfocus is a mental ability that is a natural expression of personality. However, hyperfocus can also be regarded as a psychiatric diagnosis, as a distraction from reality and a symptom of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), adult attention-deficit disorder (AADD), or autistic spectrum disorders.

Some people say that hyperfocus is an important element of meditation. In common parlance, hyperfocus is sometimes referred to as "zoning out." In sports, it is sometimes referred to as "being in the zone".

Debate

The term hyperfocus is not in common use among academics, and seldom appears in peer-reviewed articles. However, related terms such as concentration, absorption and 'focused attention' are widely used.

A positive aspect of hyperfocus might be the ability to use detachment from ordinary mentality to create new approaches to familiar situations. It may also improve learning speed and comprehension.

On the other hand, it sometimes presents a challenge to common teaching and parenting techniques. Schools and parents generally expect obedience from children and reward them for it, but hyperfocused children do not always cooperate under these circumstances. This can be overcome with investments of time and effort by the teacher or parent, but it is not always possible to spend a lot of time focusing on one child in a typical classroom situation.

Psychiatric views

Psychiatry describes only the distraction aspect of hyperfocus, referring to ADHD as 'inattentiveness and impulsiveness'. Hyperfocus is not recognised by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), and no article using the term appears in PubMed.

Besides hyperfocus, various special abilities have been suggested to occur in ADHD, including vigilance, response-readiness, enthusiasm, and flexibility. But current ADHD research does not recognize these characteristics. Greater creativity has also been suggested, but formal measures of this are no higher in children with ADHD than in control groups.

Nevertheless, psychiatric research suggests that there are several reasons for the persistence of the notion that people with ADHD have the ability to hyperfocus, such as the well-recognised comorbidity of ADHD with autistic spectrum disorders, of which excessive focus is a part. Special abilities do occur in some ADHD people, so it is easy to generalize from this minority to the whole ADHD group. ADHD is sometimes regarded as a disorder that is remarkably common (affecting 4-8% of school age children), but primarily genetically determined.

Professional psychiatry does not completely discount the existence of hyperfocus, as many adults with ADHD attribute accomplishments in their lives to this mental ability. As ADHD in adults is a relatively new area of learning in comparison with the condition in children, many clinicians feel that hyperfocus is an aspect of adult ADHD which is not well understood and merits more thorough research.

See also

• hunter vs. farmer theory
• Flow (psychology)
• A Deepness in the Sky (a science fiction novel) explores a society in which artificially-hyperfocused individuals are used as biological appliances

References

• Hartmann, Thom. (1998) Healing ADD: Simple Exercises That Will Change Your Daily Life. Underwood-Miller (1st ed.) ISBN 1-887424-37-7.
• Hartmann, Thom. (1993) ADD: A Different Perception.
• Goldstein and Barkley (1998) ADHD Report 6, 5.
• Jensen & Mrazek, (1997). Evolution and Revolution in Child Psychiatry: ADHD as a Disorder of Adaptation, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 36 (12), pp. 1672-1679.
• Shelley-Tremblay and Rosen (1996)
• Funk et al. (1993). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, creativity, and the effects of methylphenidate, Pediatrics, 91 (4), pp. 816-819.