New Research Suggests That Characteristics Often Associated With ADHD May Have Been Beneficial For Early Hunter-Gatherers While Foraging For Food
Approximately 8.7 million adults in the United States have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders of childhood, according to the CDC. People with ADHD may struggle to pay attention, control impulsive behaviors, or be hyperactive.
However, new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that characteristics often associated with ADHD might have been advantageous for early hunter-gatherers while foraging for food.
The study involved participants who played an online game simulating berry picking. The results showed that participants who identified themselves as having symptoms of ADHD left areas with fewer virtual fruits more swiftly and ended up gathering a greater number of berries in total.
These findings imply that ADHD-related behaviors might act as an adaptive mechanism in certain settings, potentially shedding light on why characteristics like distractibility and impulsivity are widespread.
“If these traits were truly negative, then you would think that over evolutionary time, they would be selected against,” said David Barack, the study’s lead author.
“Our findings are an initial data point, suggestive of advantages in certain choice contexts.”
According to Dan Eisenberg, a human evolutionary biology researcher who was not involved in this study, identifying the precise ways in which behaviors linked to ADHD could have been beneficial in historical contexts is challenging.
Eisenberg claims that these findings are intriguing because they show clear variations in foraging tactics between individuals both with and without ADHD.
ADHD is usually identified during childhood and often persists into adulthood. Characteristics of ADHD may encompass difficulty with concentration, excessive fidgeting, impulsive actions, and engaging in risky behavior. The study notes that ADHD affects 11% of children and 4% of adults.
Cavan – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
These characteristics could influence the way individuals gather food, as they might be more inclined to swiftly move from one potential food source to another.
The researchers also pointed out that in contemporary human populations who lead a nomadic lifestyle and forage for food, genetic variations associated with ADHD can be found.
So, the team speculated whether ADHD could be “a legacy of the hunter-gatherer world.” To get to the bottom of this idea, they had 457 participants engage in an online berry-picking simulation.
In this game, players aimed to collect as many virtual berries as possible within an eight-minute timeframe.
Participants gathered berries by positioning their cursor over a bush on their screen. Then, each successive foraging attempt from the same bush yielded fewer berries.
After each try, they had the option to continue with the same bush or move to a different one with more berries. However, switching bushes meant losing some of their remaining time.
Additionally, the research team conducted an online survey to assess traits of ADHD among the participants.
This included questions such as, “How often do you have difficulty concentrating on what people are saying to you, even when they are speaking to you directly?” Responses were given on a scale ranging from “never” to “very often.”
The authors clarified that they did not provide clinical diagnoses of ADHD to the participants. Interestingly, though, nearly half of the participants showed signs of ADHD, a rate that is approximately ten times higher than what is typically observed in the general adult population.
Nonetheless, the researchers observed that individuals who showed signs of ADHD in the screening tended to move faster from one patch to another in the game and collected more berries compared to those who did not exhibit ADHD traits. The participants were also incentivized with a modest financial reward, with a maximum of $3, for their berry-picking efforts.
To read the study’s complete findings, visit the link here.
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