14 DAY TRIAL // A collaboration of experts from the University of Michigan and Eckerd College recently established that young adult individuals suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are considerably more creative than their peers who do not suffer from the condition.
For the new investigation, experts used standardized creativity tests, in an experiment that replicated a 2006 surveyed carried out by other investigators. The reason the previous study was reiterated was because it used laboratory measures of creativity, rather than standard tests.
The lead author of the two studies was Eckerd assistant professor of psychology Holly White, who worked closely together with colleague and UM associate professor Priti Shah.
“We knew that ADHD individuals did better at laboratory measures of divergent thinking, but we didn't know if that would translate to real-life achievement. The current study suggests that it does,” Shah explains. The concept of divergent thinking refers to finding several solutions to a single problem.
Children are the best divergent thinkers out there. They can associate concepts in a manner that is no longer available in adults, due to education and other forms of training. Apparently, ADHD patients can still retain some of their creativity despite these adversities.
In the new study, 60 students (30 of which were diagnosed with ADHD) filled out a questionnaire that sought to assess their level of creativity in 10 areas, including visual arts, music, humor, culinary arts, writing and invention.
The researchers say that people with the condition ranked consistently higher than their healthy peers on all the assessments. ADHD diminishes a person's ability to adjust academically and socially.
Scientists also wanted to know about the creative style of each individual in the test, so they developed another questionnaire. Participants could select from four types of styles leading to creativity.
In the tests, clarifiers were those who defined an issue, while ideators were those in charge of developing ideas. Developers were defined as people who refined ideators' ideas, whereas implementers were those who made the idea happen in real-life.
Overall, ADHD patients selected ideator as their preferred creativity style, whereas healthy individuals indicated that they preferred to be clarifiers and developers.
Full details of the new research appear in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences.