ADHD Symptoms Predict Distinct Creative Problem-Solving Styles and Superior Solving Ability

Individuals with strong attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, related to inefficient cognitive executive function, may experience a surprising benefit: a natural inclination toward a type of intuitive thinking that supports creative breakthroughs, according to a new study from Drexel University researchers.

The findings, published in Personality and Individual Differences, show that people with strong ADHD symptoms, such as inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity that can impair some aspects of daily functioning at home, school, or work solved puzzles used by researchers as a standard test of creative problem-solving by relying more on sudden creative insight — “Aha!” moments — than deliberate analytic reasoning. In contrast, those with less severe symptoms were shown to use relatively less insightful thinking, but more analytic thinking, to solve the same challenges.

In the study, 299 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 33 were asked to solve a series of compound remote associates (CRA) problems, a standard test of creative problem-solving in which people try to find a fourth word that fits with a set of three given words. For example, the solution to the problem: pine, crab and sauce, is apple — as in, pineapple, crabapple and applesauce.

Participants reported how each solution came to them: whether through “insight,” an “Aha!” which suddenly emerges from unconscious processing, or through conscious, step-by-step “analytic” thinking.

The results of the study showed that participants with the strongest and weakest ADHD symptoms solved approximately the same number of problems overall. However, the people with the strongest symptoms solved more of these problems by insight than by analysis. Those with the weakest symptoms solved the puzzles insightfully and analytically at approximately the same rate.

“We found that individuals reporting the strongest ADHD symptoms relied significantly more on insight to solve problems,” said Drexel co-author Hannah Maisano, a doctoral student in the College of Arts and Sciences. “They appear to favor unconscious, associative processing that can produce sudden creative breakthroughs.”

“Being both very high or very low in executive control can be beneficial for creative problem-solving, but you get to the right answer in different ways,” said Christine Chesebrough, Feinstein Institutes postdoctoral researcher who began collaborating on the study while a Drexel PhD student.

Surprisingly, the authors found that the lowest and highest ADHD-symptom groups significantly outperformed those with intermediate-level symptoms. Thus, those with very strong ADHD symptoms were able to solve more of these puzzles than most of the other participants, according to the researchers.

“Our results show that having strong ADHD symptoms can mean being a better creative problem-solver than most people, that is, than people who have low to moderate ADHD symptoms,” said John Kounios, PhD, and the senior author. “Understanding these strengths could help people harness their natural problem-solving style in school, work and everyday life.”

Additional authors include Brian Daly, PhD, Drexel professor of psychological and brain sciences, Fengquing Zhang, PhD, Drexel associate professor of psychological and brain sciences, and Mark Beeman professor of psychology at Northwestern Univeristy.

Read the full paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886926000231?via%3Dihub#s0125