Preliminary Results of a Scoping Review on Assistive Technologies for Adults with ADHD

TL;DR

This paper presents a scoping review of existing assistive technologies for adults with ADHD, highlighting research trends, gaps, and the need for more positive support approaches.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current research on ADHD assistive technologies for adults and identifies areas for future development.

Findings

Most papers focus on therapeutic interventions

Significant increase in recent research publications

Research gaps identified for future exploration

Abstract

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, is prevalent in the adult population. Long perceived and treated as a childhood condition, ADHD and its characteristics nonetheless impact a significant portion of adults today. In contrast to children with ADHD, adults with ADHD face unique challenges in the workplace and in higher education. In this work-in-progress paper, we present a scoping review as a foundation to understand and explore existing technology-based approaches to support adults with ADHD. In total, our search returned 3,538 papers upon which we selected, based on PRISMA-ScR, a total of 46 papers for in-depth analysis. Our initial findings highlight that most papers take on a therapeutic or intervention perspective instead of a more positive support perspective. Our analysis also found a tremendous increase in recent papers on the topic, which highlights that more and more researchers are becoming aware of the need to address ADHD with adults. For the future, we aim to further analyze the corpus and identify research gaps and potentials for further development of ADHD assistive technologies.