Research Recap with Skye: Delay Aversion, Inattention, and ADHD
Welcome to hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD Brain. And today I'm joined by Sky Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper, although today we're going to be looking at two and so it's a little something different.
What we do is we try to see how the papers were conducted, try to find any practical takeaways and discuss what's going on in these papers. So the two papers we're gonna discuss today are Boredom, Proneness, and its correlation with internet addiction and internet activities and adolescence with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And our second paper then is boredom, proneness and Inattention in Children With and Without ADHD, the mediating rule of delay aversion.
So lots in there, lots to discuss. And we'll get all into that. And as this is a new series, I do wanna make sure that people know that. I would love to hear what your thoughts about it. Feel free to go to hackingyouradhd.com/contact and leave me a note about what you think about this series.
I'd love to hear about this and I've really appreciated all the feedback I've already gotten for this series. So I'd love to hear more and make sure that I'm doing this in ways that you guys really like. Now, new episodes of Research Recap will be coming out every other Friday.
And with that, let's get into this.
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William Curb: And with that, let's get into this.
Skye Waterson: Yeah, let's do it. I'm really interested in this because what we're gonna be looking at here is two papers. One of them, the first one you said is from 2018. and it's really, I would say, the precursor to the second paper where they go into a little bit more about why there's this correlation between boredom and ADHD.
And you know what we can. What we can glean from it, not just what it looks like, but if we look at the first paper, the 2018 paper, it is pretty much at its core a pretty straightforward paper. They had a look at adolescents age between 11 and 18 in Taiwan who had ADHD according to the d sm.
Always loved that. and then they were looking at their experiences of boredom and their experiences of internet activities. And then weirdly, they looked at like parents' marital status and a couple of other pieces as well.
William Curb: Yeah. I mean, and they did find that those things were like, I really significant in those results too, which is uh, yeah.
Interesting as well. also, I think it's just like, there were a lot of kids in this study. We had three hundred kids, uh mm-hmm. And uh, the one thing I kinda was like, oh, they had. 86% of them were male. Yeah. And so you're like, okay, that is a, you know, quite, push into one side of that spectrum there.
Skye Waterson: yeah.
William Curb: But I also understand that, we're still catching up on getting girls diagnosed.
Skye Waterson: Exactly. And this was 2018. So, you know, the chances that they were having that conversation is much lower. At that point, they were still just like ADHD is a thing.
William Curb: Yeah. We should look at it. So, yeah, I thought that it was a great study to look at with boredom because, well, maybe first let's kind, maybe we should talk about why we would want to look at a study of boredom and ADHD in general.
Mm-hmm. And some of the terms that we're using here. Because I remember what we, uh, talked about a few weeks ago. I was like, yeah, we should do some papers on boredom. You're like. Boredom. Okay. Uh, but I mean, then you look at these papers like, oh, that's really interesting how this affects. yeah, because like one of the earlier things I was looking at, I'm like, okay, well let's look up what the like, definition of boredom is here.
And I'm like, oh, we don't have a clinical definition of boredom. Mm-hmm. It's just something that you know, we're trying to work with? Yeah. And uh, what I came up with here was that boredom is defined as the averse experience to, of, frustrated ones God, that is just terrible wording.
I don't know why I left it like that, but it's just having these adverse experience when being frustrated with trying to engage in simulating activities and not having stimulations, and then having this, you know, lack of simulation in trying to, in whatever you're doing, be it internal or external?
Skye Waterson: Yeah, a hundred percent. And they said right from the beginning, it has been identified as one of the common causes of addictive substance use. Substance behavior. And it's interesting too, it's so simple, but it makes so much sense. Like, oh yeah, if you are bored and you have chronic boredom, you're more likely to engage in addictive behavior, which is what they're looking at here.
And in the next paper they go into it in a bit more detail. and it makes sense that people who have ADHD are more likely to support this paper to experience that.
William Curb: Yeah. I remember seeing, I don't think it would be, I would categorize a study, but it was like online experimentation.
People are doing work. Mm-hmm. Putting people in boarding situations where like, oh, you have this device that can give you a mild shock, or you can just sit and wait in this room, and people are like, I don't want to do that. And then. They're just sitting there and like, I've been sitting here for 10 minutes, I'm gonna shock myself again.
Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm. And yeah,
William Curb: it's one of the things like, yeah, we will, in a situation where we're not being stimulated, we will find ways to find stimulation, even if, if it's unpleasant.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. And if we have ADHD, you know, we know that we struggle with this particularly low arousal, and that means that we can find ourselves.
In that unpleasant feeling a lot more. I, it reminds me of clients I've worked with who've, who I've spoken to who said they've couldn't. Irrationally angry in long meetings because they have to pay attention. And these are people with very professional jobs. you know, they have to pay attention, they have to engage, but the person they're listening to is, not necessarily the most interesting person.
The meeting doesn't necessarily have to exist at all, and it's going on for far too long, and it can be like a very viscerally frustrating experience. Having that level of boredom.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, thinking back to my life and many, if I see that I have to wait in line for something, the chances of me just choosing to do something else are much higher.
Oh, that's gonna take a five minute wait, but that much less interesting thing has a zero minute wait. Guess I'm gonna do the zero minute wait thing just because.
Skye Waterson: I'm gonna go ahead and think that Disney makes a lot of money off us.
William Curb: I did a vacation with my family there and they have this, disability service, pass that you can get.
Oh wow. That is, all on their like app and it is very similar to their. Lightning lane thing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you get the disability service and it's mainly aimed for people with a DH, adhd, autism, people that would have trouble late Oh, staying in line. Yeah. It's not meant, uh, really for physical disabilities.
Skye Waterson: Oh, that's so interesting.
William Curb: And what it does is instead of waiting in line, you like, click this thing. It's like, okay, this, they're like, this line has a 55 minute wait. And you go, okay, and I'll sign this, sign up for this thing. And then, um, in 55 minutes I can like. Scan my thing and it'll be like, okay, you've waited in line for 55 minutes, even though I didn't physically have to wait in line.
Skye Waterson: That's crazy. That's the most accessibility supporting thing I've ever heard of. And it's in Disneyland. Yeah. Which I've never been to. Yeah.
William Curb: It initially felt like I was like. Just skipping the line here. 'cause that's like, I'm not waiting in line. I'm going over here and looking at the shop while the time is going.
Mm-hmm. And then I'm like, but this is access accessibility, like straight up. Mm-hmm. I would not wait 55 minutes to go on a ride. Yeah. I just tell my kids, Hey, we're not doing that one. 'cause there's no way we're gonna get through this.
Skye Waterson: And that one and that one. 'cause there's a lot of long lines. Yeah.
William Curb: Yeah.
And so I was like, oh yeah, this is great. Accessibility here. Mm-hmm.
Skye Waterson: To kind of bring it back to here in terms of, you know, saying like, oh, is this fair? Should I be allowed to do this? Well, what they actually found was that yes. You know, when you looked at the results, people who struggled with ADHD were also more likely to struggle with internet addiction.
Mm-hmm. So. the results of ADHD was that there was a relationship between boredom, proneness and adolescents with ADHD and their risk of internet addiction. Um, which they sort of said to me, okay, we probably need to go ahead and evaluate, uh, you know, if somebody has this struggle, we should go ahead and, and check in and, and make sure they're not experiencing this problem as well, because they're too, are correlated.
William Curb: Yeah, and I think especially with. How, easy it is to get on the internet now. Mm-hmm. It feels like this instant cure for boredom, even though Yeah. It's often at, a lot of the times what we're doing is we're going to social media and scrolling things that we don't actually mm-hmm. Find that interesting.
Yeah. And so then we're having a worse experience, but we're still doing it because. Yeah, it's so easy
Skye Waterson: and it's actually something I like to talk about with clients because one of the things that seems to happen a lot is we will find ourselves in a position where we are saying, okay, I don't want to be.
I don't wanna be bored, but I also don't wanna be over distracted by a bunch of things. So I'm gonna remove everything. So my space is very minimal. I don't have a lot of stuff, nothing to distract me except my phone. And so what ends up happening is by removing, and I say this as, you've got lovely things behind you.
So many cool things to do. And I have, you know, little fidgets around me and like little retro games and things. That's actually to stop me from going on my phone. Yeah.
William Curb: It's the, it's a lot easier for me to do something small that I know I can stop.
Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
William Curb: but if I like, do a activity on my phone, it's a lot easier to get drawn in and then me going like, okay, well if I do this for 10 more minutes, then I'll have three minutes to finish this email that I need to write.
And
Skye Waterson: Exactly. And 10
William Curb: minutes later, well, if I, I'm sure I could do that in one minute. And yeah, it's like, oh no, I've. I completely squandered my time that I needed for a number of things, not just that one email I was supposed to write in this half hour.
Skye Waterson: Yeah, a hundred percent. Exactly. And it's one of the reasons why sometimes the solution to that problem.
Is on a practical level to increase the amount of things that you can do that are fun in your space, but focus on the ones that you can naturally stop. Because we sort of say, oh, well I'll get rid of everything and then I'll just have myself. But the truth is, you have your phone and unless you're gonna do a dumb phone or something like that, you're probably gonna find that is a distraction for you.
William Curb: With this paper, we get to see that, The, um, boredom proneness is, a meaningful risk factor for finding these things and Yeah. Did you look at the, uh, boredom proneness scale or like the questionnaire that I had for that?
Skye Waterson: No, I didn't. What did they say?
Um, I found
William Curb: it, there's great questions. Like it starts with like, it's easy for me to concentrate on my activities. I'm like, okay, that's, you know, there. And I was like, time always seems to be passing slowly. Uh. Let's see what, but I think my favorite question on here was having to look at someone's home movies or travel slides bores me tremendously.
And this
Skye Waterson: That's amazing.
William Curb: Yeah. And typically it's on a one to seven scale, although, mm-hmm. Specifically for the study they listed that they did a uh, yeah. One to five.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. I feel like the person who wrote that had like a personal vendetta. Yeah. Like
William Curb: I guess I am a very boredom, prone based on the question, just looking through the questions, being like, yeah, I get bored real easy. although I'm, there's other things, like I find it easy to entertain myself. Yeah. I endlessly find entertainment. I, but I don't know if that, I don't know if that question points to being easily bored or easily.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Easily distracted. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then in 2025, do you wanna jump into that paper or is there anything else you wanna say about the 2018 one?
William Curb: Just the socioeconomic factors that mm-hmm. Being like, yeah. If you have parents that are well involved, you're less likely to have internet addiction and mm-hmm. Uh, they did not discuss why that is other than, it's fairly obvious if you are home alone, not being entertained. Yeah, you'll find the easy solution.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah. It was, so they sort of speculated on like parental involvement and parental oversight and, and the effects that, that would have.
But they didn't have too much. They had a few conversations about, like, maybe it was also about the ability to go outside, access to resources related to that. but it was interesting to see that they included that as well.
William Curb: We should also mention that this was, a lot of this was in comparison to doing.
Online studying?
Skye Waterson: Yes. Yeah.
William Curb: Uh, and you know, being a 2018 paper, who knew that it would be so relevant in just a couple years.
Skye Waterson: Yes, a hundred percent. And it was interesting to see this paper sort of from 2018, which is around about when I was sort of starting to realize I had ADHD. It was not a time when people were on the internet talking about it the way that they do now.
And then fast forward to 2025, so hot off the press, we have a paper that came out looking at boredom proneness, in children with and without ADHD. And this time they had a lot more fire power. To bring to the conversation because since that time there was conversations about, you know, delay aversion, what that means.
Um, they also talk about the default mode network, which we love. Um, and they also start with the concept of boredom, which I really appreciated because clearly they've been having this problem as well. What is boredom? And they basically said it's, you know, closely related to problems with attention regulation.
It's associated with frustration., It can even trigger, um, feelings of depression and it's associated with increased risk of problematic eating behavior, substance use, problem gambling, as well as ADHD symptoms. So they really came in hard in this 2025 paper saying, Hey, I know boredom sounds like something that you just say like, no one should be bored.
But in reality it's quite a problem. But, um, but yeah, they, they talked about delay aversion, as in saying, you know, difficulty waiting is also a common problem for children with ADHD. And ironically, we literally just talked about waiting, The symptoms of ADHD reflect alteration in the brain's dopaminergic reward system, and the value of delayed rewards is discounted to a greater extent than normal.
So we tend to face adverse consequences when confronted with delays. Anybody who's been confronted with delays will feel that on a visceral level, 'cause often those adverse consequences are viscerally feeling and um, and so we typically opt for immediate or less delayed options. Um, which will affect our abilities when it comes to being bored.
William Curb: Mm-hmm. Yep. And I, uh, love that this study, compared to the previous study, I love this study, had a control group. Mm-hmm. Uh, compare this to whereas, last day was just looking at, Hey, can we find these correlations with this? And this was like, Hey, when you have ADHD, are you more likely to. Deal with these, board system.
So it had like 183 children, 93 with ADHD 90 without, and then it was ages like nine through 16.
Skye Waterson: Yeah, exactly. So this, you know, study, they specifically said, you know, previous researchers established a robust association between bored and proneness and ADHD symptoms. Um, but here they really wanted to look at the mechanisms of what was going on.
And they used the short boredom proneness scale, which they translated into Chinese 'cause this is the way that study was conducted.
and, um, and then yeah, went through some questionnaires, uh, to see what was happening. So what did, what did they find?
William Curb: they did find that, uh, delay aversion is a, key mechanism linking boredom to inattention. Mm-hmm. And then they, you know, were finding that. This, you know, adds to this idea that, um, ADHD symptoms, go beyond just having this emotional di uh, regulation.
So it's adds to the idea that ADHD is more than just attention problems. It's, you know, emotional justice regulation, it's motivation, and it is mm-hmm. These delays in. Being averse to delays that is really driving these factors.
Skye Waterson: Exactly. And it was really nice to see all of the, in some ways this paper is so good because it gives us this information. It also gives us a sense of how far we've come in the ADHD conversation in general, which, you know, is, is really good to see. And then they also talked about the default model.
They said, um, boredom is closely linked to the regions of the brain's default mode network.
And I just wrote default model, exclamation point.
William Curb: Yeah.
Skye Waterson: and the research has found that boredom induced negative effects was associated with increased activities in the bilateral vent medial prefrontal cortex, and decreased activity in the pre nucleus. and they're sort of saying here that it appears that.
Resting state default mode network activity, closely AB overlap, those observed during the experimentally manipulated boredom conditions. So they're bringing the conversation and saying, excessive default mode network activity has been linked to attention lapses. A common feature of ADHD, as well.
William Curb: I really do feel that the more we're learning about the default mode network and it's. Not transferring to the task positive network mm-hmm. Is something that we're going to just be seeing coming up in research over and over again and how that mm-hmm. This is really what's limiting our attentional regulation.
And is going to be something that we're. I don't know if there'll be a lot we can do about that, but it is going to be something where, oh, this is where we need to focus on trying to. Get ourselves to be, have a little bit more stimulation when we're focused on what we want to be focusing on.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah. That's when we need to give ourselves the, that boost. And for those of you who are like default mode network, we have talked about it. So there are papers, there are articles, uh, sorry. Podcast episodes Yeah. On that topic.
William Curb: Yeah. And just, just to give people quickly, yeah. It is the part of your brain that you.
Use when you're not doing goal and oriented activity. Mm-hmm. Then this test positive network is what you're doing with the part of your brain you're using when you are doing goal oriented activity and there are indications with ADHD that you don't switch between the two very easily and your default mode network tends to just stay active most of the time.
So you have daydreaming while doing goal act activity. Yeah. And just thinking about other things.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. And for anyone who's tried to do a task and then found themselves in tab three of an idea that they didn't even fully process that they were even thinking about, that's the default mode network conversation.
William Curb: Yeah. So an interesting thing I did find about this study was that the, there was this heavy reliance on parental reporting on these things.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And they found
William Curb: much stronger implications when. Parents were looking at the behaviors of their children compared to children doing their self rating.
and it's just one of these things with a DH, ADHD that I find that. The severity of the symptoms are often reported based on how they're affecting other people rather than how they're affecting yourself.
Skye Waterson: Yes, 100%. I think that's always such an interesting conversation, and even in the conversation of diagnosis, right?
In order to get a diagnosis, you have to go back sometimes and find teacher's reports, and it's like, if your teacher didn't think that you were disrupting the class, it might be hard for us to give you a diagnosis.
William Curb: Yeah. Which is especially relevant with people that are inattentive.
Skye Waterson: Yes, a hundred percent.
And people who are masking really well.
William Curb: Yeah. which yeah, I was saying earlier, my kids were going back to school. And asking them, Hey, do you want to bring fidgets and stuff? And my daughter being like, Nope. Don't wanna have any of that in the class. I'm like, oh, because you don't want to be perceived as different.
Skye Waterson: Which is, which I completely relate to completely did the same thing. and it meant that I got diagnosed way later and also it meant that, you know. It was harder to find those things that were like, you know, it was, it was more like, it would be great if she read the last page of the test.
William Curb: Yeah. I was like, oh yeah. Did the, number of tests I've gotten back where it's like, why didn't you do this problem? Oh, I didn't see it. How did you not see this whole page? I don't know.
Skye Waterson: To kind of summarize this. It really is, for those of you who are curious, there is an association between boredom and ADHD.
It's very real. It is. we see it across time when we are looking at these different papers. We see that it has a significant effect on ourselves. and we are starting to see a little bit more about why that is, that is happening as well.
William Curb: Yeah. And we're, Seeing this with, especially with this 2050, this delay aversion is being this thing, this key indicator of oh, are you going to be going into these bordering things?
And then if you have boredom induced, are you going to be able to deal with it?
Skye Waterson: Exactly, and I feel like at this point I should probably give you guys something. So if you do DM me at Unconventional organization and just message us boredom, we will send you like a list of examples of fidgets and, and fun, adult friendly dopamine things that you can do. I do want you to go, well, that's cool, but like, let's have some practical strategies so we, we will give those to you as well.
William Curb: Absolutely. Because it is something where you can't just rely on the, what we have often heard is just, just focus, just mm-hmm. Push through and those are really bad strategies and don't push through.
These studies are saying, yeah, this, that won't work. You need to have something to add to the stimulation so that you're not feeling, yeah. Just mind numbingly bored. 'cause you're just not gonna be able to push through.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. It's associated with a lot of things we don't want to be focusing on and dealing with, so don't do it.
Grab that fidget it's, okay. You can, yeah. Yeah.