A Roadmap of Mixed Reality Body Doubling for Adults with ADHD

2026-05-08

AI Summary

Adults with ADHD frequently struggle with initiating and completing tasks, highlighting an urgent need for effective self-management support. This study proposes a novel, structured framework comprising twelve dimensions to systematically elucidate the mechanisms through which body doubling functions as an intervention for adult ADHD, encompassing key aspects such as motivation, characteristics of the companion, modes of interaction, contextual factors, and outcome evaluation. Integrating perspectives from human-computer interaction and mixed reality (MR), the work identifies critical gaps in current research—including a scarcity of MR prototypes, insufficient interactivity, and a lack of empirical validation—and offers a clear pathway for the design and evaluation of future technology-mediated interventions. By doing so, it advances body doubling from an anecdotal practice toward a theoretically grounded and technologically integrated approach.

Abstract

Adults with ADHD may use a self-management technique known as Body Doubling, in which the participant employs the presence of one or more agents as a means of initiating and completing tasks. We developed a framework on body doubling with twelve dimensions to better understand the characteristics of body doubling and discover future research directions for developing and testing body doubling for adults with ADHD. Our framework accounts for individual motivation, agent-related dimensions, interaction related dimensions, contextual dimensions, and efficacy. These dimensions show existing research gaps such as limited mixed reality prototypes, possibilities for more interactive body doubles, and the need for empirical studies to further understand of body doubling and adults with ADHD.

Problem

• ADHD
• Body Doubling
• Mixed Reality
• Self-management
• Empirical Study

Innovation

• Mixed Reality
• Body Doubling
• ADHD
• Framework
• Human-Computer Interaction