Why Are Individuals With ADHD More Prone to Boredom? Examining Attention Control and Working Memory as Mediators of Boredom in Young Adults With ADHD Traits

Abstract

Objective: Proneness to boredom has been reported in ADHD populations; however, no study to date has examined potential mediators of ADHD-related boredom. The current study investigated whether individuals with ADHD traits exhibit higher levels of boredom propensity relative to their peers without ADHD traits and explore if attention control and working memory mediate the relationship between ADHD and proneness to boredom. Method: Young adults (Mage = 19.1, SD = 1.3) with (n = 31) and without (n = 57) ADHD traits completed self-report measures (i.e., boredom proneness, current ADHD symptoms, and childhood indicators of ADHD) and six counterbalanced performance-based cognitive measures (i.e., three attention control and three working memory tasks). Results: Young adults with ADHD traits exhibited large magnitude effect size differences in proneness to boredom relative to their peers without ADHD traits (d = 2.09). In addition, proneness to boredom and ADHD trait group status were related to worse performance on attention control and working memory factors. Both attention control and working memory factors partially mediated the relation between ADHD and boredom, accounting for 5.8% and 6.4% of the variance in ADHD-related boredom, respectively. Conclusion: Executive attention processes related to difficulty controlling attention and using working memory may provide a partial explanation for why individuals with ADHD traits experience boredom.