ADHD comes with a kaleidoscope of behaviors that include distractibility, restlessness, forgetfulness, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.
Our findings are an initial data point suggestive of advantages in certain choice contexts.
David and the team of researchers came up with an experiment in which they invited 457 adults to partake.
We hypothesized this would lead to worse performance.
(@ahmed@kilpatrickand others have hypothesized this has some adaptive benefits.)
When examined from a pure reward-maximizing strategy, these foragers are sub-optimal.
They believed this mimicked ancestral foraging behavior as well.
As part of the experiment, participants were also screened based on their ADHD-like traits.
David stressed that the screening could not be considered as a diagnosis.
Of the total number of participants, 206 were deemed to have positive results of having ADHD-like traits.
Moreover, the researchers also found that the ADHD-like traits were more of a boon than a bane.
Check out the publication in Proc B to get the low-down on the details!
The teams work was nevertheless praised for trying to understand a condition that is fairly common today.
In our evolutionary past, such behavior may sometimes have been highly advantageous, he said.
ADHD can be a serious problem, but its a problem in large measure because of todays environments.
Typical ADHD traits could be highly advantageous in certain situations
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