ADHD ‘audio shield’ turns sounds from daily tasks into powerful focus tool

ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) is stunningly expensive to both the economy and to the people who live with it day to day.

According to the A.D.D. Resource Center article “The Economic Impact of ADHD: Understanding the True Cost to Society,” ADHD costs the US economy over US$150 billion annually ($122.8 billion in adult costs and $33.2 billion in costs for children). Obviously, part of that tally accrues from medicine and hospital stays, but an estimated 74% to 86% of it comes from unemployment, lost productivity, and the toll it takes on caregivers.

And none of that can express the stunning emotional and psychological cost of anxiety and depression (both of which also bring financial burdens) that frequently crawl shackle-to-shackle with ADHD.

So, what if there were a simple, drug-free, completely non-addictive method for reducing the power of ADHD through a simple intervention to boost mindfulness? And what if that solution didn’t require any deliveries of supplies or expensive monthly subscriptions, because you yourself created the raw material that improved your quality of life?

That solution is surprisingly close to self-generated ASMR. While autonomous sensory meridian response is the pleasant and even euphoric tingling that some people experience from hearing certain sounds, Stanford researchers are employing something that might seem more mundane, but is every bit as powerful and likely far more useful.

By wearing earbuds connected to small, hand-mounted microphones, users can hear the subtle sounds of everyday tasks that can serve as in-the-moment attention sound cues protecting them against the ADHD onslaught of non-stop digital (and analogue) distractions. During experiments, people using the “audio shield” not only spent more time completing tasks and employing trial-and-error (rather than quitting their work), but reported greater mindfulness.

For Sean Follmer, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of Stanford’s SHAPE Lab, recovering attention is a critical imperative. “There’s so much time that we spend in these moments, making coffee or waiting in line, where we find ourselves just endlessly scrolling on our phones,” he says. “Meanwhile, life is passing us by. We wanted to create something that makes us more aware of our surroundings and to appreciate the real world over the digital.”

Co-researcher Yujie Tao is the lead author of “Audio Augmentation of Manual Interactions to Support Mindfulness” in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, and a doctoral scholar in computer science. She says that by heightening “attention to otherwise mundane daily tasks,” mindfulness “transforms routine actions into more purposeful focus and greater engagement in our everyday lives.”

In Tao’s and Follmer’s laboratory, 60 participants – half using the audio shield – interacted with various objects. Utilizing the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale questionnaire and careful tracking of user behavior (including time spent observing and exploring the objects), Tao concluded that those using the audio shield reported “a statistically higher level of mindfulness,” while engaging their objects longer and with more trial-and-error exploration.

Further qualitative study with two mindfulness coaches affirmed Tao’s results. One participant who reported feeling “intimate” and “safe” while audio-shielded said, “I felt like I could just be a child and go into a child play state.” Another said that audio-shielding could be “a way of helping people fall in love with the world again … to recover things that have been lost.”

Perhaps ironically, Tao’s research into being mindfully present in the real world co-exists with her research into augmented and virtual reality. But instead of using AR and VR to escape the world, Tao began pondering how those technologies could help people reunite with it. The audio shield she co-developed simply amplifies ordinary sounds that otherwise would be lost in the daily din: the sh-sh-sh of water hissing from a faucet, the pitter-patter of fingers tapping a table-top, or the crisp crackling from scratching one’s own scalp, face, or beard.

But aren’t there already countless mindfulness methods and machines? How is the audio shield an improvement?

First, many previous approaches require listening to verbal instructions that would interfere with conversation. Second, many mindfulness apps require withdrawal from one’s surroundings to quiet spaces that one can’t access while caring for children or working for pay at an office. Third, the audio shield encourages people to experience their world with fresh ears, and that novelty boosts curiosity and drives clarity and attention. That is, it produces mindfulness.

 “By playing these real-world sounds back in real time,” says Follmer, “our device invites a fresh perspective on ordinary interactions and fosters greater awareness of the present moment.”

Tao and her team plan to explore the long-range benefits of the audio shield, its application for existing mindfulness training programs, and as part of treating anxiety and ADHD. As she explains, “We believe this device has the potential to help us all make sense of our world once again.”

Source: Stanford University