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The Effect of Arousal Level on Creativity and Time Estimation in Children with ADHD
Getting bored quickly - particularly in the classroom - is one of the most common features of children with ADHD. Some have proposed that this observed behavior is related to cortical underarousal in individuals with ADHD - i.e. certain regions in the brains of people with ADHD tend to be underactive relative to what is found in those without ADHD. As a result, researchers have suggested that people with ADHD are especially likely to be underaroused during dull tasks which impairs their actual performance during these conditions. This is certainly one plausible factor that could contribute to the difficulty that many students with ADHD experience in the classroom.
If underarousal is at least part of the basis for difficulties experienced by students with ADHD than, in theory, some of the performance differences that are evident between students with and without ADHD during low arousal conditions should disapper under conditions of high arousal. This interesting question was the subject of a paper published recently in Developmental Neuropsychology (Shaw, G., & Brown, G. (1999). Arousal, time estimation, and time use in attention-disordered children. Developmental Neuropsycholgy, 16, 227-242.
This study was conducted with students in an English high school. As you may know, ADHD is diagnosed much less frequently in England than in the US, not I think because of any actual difference in how many children are affected by ADHD in the two countries, but instead, because of very different attitudes towards the disorder in England and the US. Thus, none of the participants in the study to be described had actually received a formal diagnosis of ADHD.
Particpants in the study were all 12 years old. Teacher ratings of children's ADHD symptoms were used to identify 2 groups of 12 students each. One group (10 boys and 2 girls) received extremely high ratings of ADHD symptoms using a standardized behavior rating scale. As noted above, none of these students had been formally diagnosed with ADHD and none were receiving any type of medical treatment. Their scores were well within the range of those obtained by children with ADHD, however, and it is likely that many of these children would have qualified for the diagnosis. At the very least, they were certainly displaying very high levels of inattentiveness and hyperactive/ impulsive behaviors according to their teachers. A comparison group - matched on a variety of characteristics including gender composition - was created from students who received very low ratings on this scale.
The design of this study was actually quite interesting. The experimenters were especially interested in how students' arousal level effected their ability to accurately estimate time (problems with time estimation has been proposed by Dr. Russell Barkley to be an important problem in those with ADHD) and their performance on tasks that assess creativity. Arousal level was manipulated by having students watch both a "boring" and an "arousing" videotape (i.e. a high speed car chase scene). After watching each tape, students were asked to estimate the amount of time each clip had lasted. They were also then asked to perform two tasks that are believed to assess creativity. These creativity "tests" presented students with various types of stimuli on paper that the students were asked to use to develop as many different figures or pictures as possible. In addition to collecting these data, the authors also collected data on a variety of other issues. This included students' self-reports of ADHD symptoms, their tendency to seek out "risky" types of activities, and their own assessment of their ability to use time wisely. Teachers provided estimates of students' ability to use time wisely as well (e.g. being on time for activities, being able to plan the right amount of time to finish work, etc.).
Results
A number of interesting and potentially important results are reported. As one would expect, students in the ADHD group (remember, these are not students who had actually been diagnosed with ADHD but those whose teachers had rated them as showing high levels of ADHD behaviors) reported much higher levels of ADHD symptoms than the comparison group. Thus, at least on this dimension, they seemed to be aware of their difficulties. Also consistent with expectations, the students with ADHD described themselves as being more interested in seeking out high stimulating (i.e."risky") types of activities.
For self-reports of ability to use time wisely (e.g. "Can I plan the correct amount of time to complete my homework?) the results were quite different. Here, the ADHD students reported that they were just as competent as students in the comparison group. This was true even though the teachers reported that these children had substantial deficits in their time-planning abilities. This contrast is interesting and a bit perplexing - i.e. the students are aware of and acknowledge their high levels of ADHD behaviors but seem oblivious to the difficulties they have in structuring and organizing their time.
The data pertaining to time estimation and creativity under the low and high arousal conditions are especially interesting. After watching the low arousal video, children in the ADHD group reported that the video lasted significantly longer than children in the comparison group. Time estimates for the high arousal video did not differ between the two groups. In this condition, the students with ADHD were just as accurate. For the creativity tasks, the scores received by children in the two groups did not differ for the task performed after the low arousing video was watched. After watching the high arousal video, however, the students with ADHD obtained significantly higher scores.
Implications
The results of this interesting study indicate that how the performance of students with ADHD compares to their peers can vary significantly depending on their arousal level. When aroused, their ability to correctly estimate the passage of time did not differ from comparison children and their performance on a test designed to estimate creativity was actually better.
Although these data certainly do not prove the hypothesis that cortical underarousal may be the neurological underpinning of ADHD, they are consistent with this proposition. The data also imply that when evaluating the ability of students with ADHD to perform certain tasks, estimates that are made in low-arousal conditions may given an inaccurate impression of their abilities. Unfortuantely, this is often the context in which such performance estimates are obtained in educational settings.
As the authors note "...although most students are able to organize themselves and function effectively under low levels of stimulation, this is not true of ADHD students." Thus, developing ways to make the school environment a more "interesting and arousing" one may be especially important for improving the performance of students with ADHD. Figuring out reasonable ways to accomplish this provides an interesting and important challenge for parents and educators alike. I would hope that research on this issue is currently underway and will be published in the near future.
Note: This article originally appeared in Attention Research Update, an online newsletter written by Dr. David Rabiner, a Duke University psychologist and former member of CHADD's Professional Advisory Board. You can learn more about Attention Research Update and sign up for a free subscription at www.helpforadd.com.