ADHD and the trouble with habituation
Why you so often miss what’s right in front of you
Wander the avenues and boulevards of Disneyland (or any of its sibling resorts around the world), and you’ll notice a rather clever use of colour at almost every turn.
Or, rather, you absolutely won’t.
Seventeen million visitors a year pile through the gates of the original Disneyland park in Anaheim, California alone.
Which requires the Disneyland operation to rely upon an unimaginably vast infrastructure of public amenities, power supplies, safety and security equipment, and all manner of real world utilities to keep the magic alive.
Vital, for sure. But, aesthetically, a far cry from the naive innocence and visual perfection we all expect from a self-styled Magic Kingdom – or any other fantastical world worthy of the Disney name.
Which is why, in the seventies, the legendary Imagineer, John Hench, ‘created’ a very specific shade of green with which to paint the railings, security cameras, trash cans and any other necessary but visually offensive object dotted around the park.
It’s known as ‘Go Away Green’, and it was chosen thanks to a fascinating bit of colour psychology…
…that smothering an object in a hue so staggeringly bland fools the conscious – and, by extension, the attention – into considering the thing so unremarkable and irrelevant that it doesn’t even register as being there at all.
Nothing to see here…
Go Away Green’s success at rending objects invisible to the casual observer echoes – exaggerates even – something called habituation.
This is the human brain’s ability to ignore ‘non-essential’ (ie non-threatening) stimuli in order to better focus on the information that’s actually important.
You know: useful information that might increase the likelihood of staying alive, seizing opportunities and otherwise thriving.
All of the less interesting data our senses pick up on – especially if it is repetitive and has become familiar to us – is deemed surplus to requirements and is simply filtered out.
Cancelled. Ignored. Struck from the records as though it’s not even a thing.
And it’s a fate that awaits the vast majority of the stimuli we’re bombarded with each and every day.
Unless (you guessed it) you’re ADHD.
…but so much to see over there
Research shows that habituation in ADHD works differently. And that many of us ADHDers struggle to tune out repetitive stimuli, allowing lots – more than is average, at least – to break through our filters.
As a result, the ADHD brain pays an awful lot of attention to an awful lot of stuff at any given moment – making focus and attention even harder to maintain.
This, of course, amounts to the classic ADHD traits of inattention and distractibility fuelled by an incessantly over-stimulated mind.
And so it’s ironic, isn’t it, that with our attention being spread around so thinly, those objects and noises and people and conversations that are right in front of us are now at risk of being missed?
Valuable head space is being robbed by the irrelevant, and so the important is in jeopardy of being overlooked. And even the special measures we put in place aren’t always effective at keeping such distractibility at bay.
Think about it…
the post-it note that was a sure-fire reminder not to forget
the stack of mail that was so in the way it would definitely be sorted through soon
even the bag for life strategically and obviously positioned right by the front door
Glance at any of these impossible-to-miss objects enough times and (assuming you’re here because you’re an ADHD type) I’ll bet you simply won’t see them any more at all.
You’ll have become desensitised to them. So they’ll have disappeared. Vanished. Faded into the fabric of their environment, chameleon-like, as if you can see right through them – even when they’re staring you in the face.
In short, they’ll have lost their prominence – thanks to your inability to effectively habituate other, less important distractions, which have ended up stealing the stage.
So, next time you can’t see something for looking, know that it’s simply your ADHD doing one of the things it knows how to do best.
Either that, or the thing right in front of you has been slathered with several coats of John Hinch’s Go Away Green paint.
Copyright © Kevin Exley 2025
You should not regard the information contained in this article/post as being, or as a replacement for, professional medical advice or treatment. The words contained herein represent the thoughts and opinions of the author, who is not clinically or medically trained.
References: Massa, J., & O’Desky, I. H. (2011). Impaired Visual Habituation in Adults With ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 16(7), 553-561. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054711423621 (Original work published 2012.)
Image: Khitai Van Laren on Unsplash