When foraging, impatience can pay off.
Attention Deficit Disorder adhd can complicate a young person’s life in today’s society, where you have to sit still at a desk for long periods of time.
However, for most of his time, man has lived as a hunter-gatherer. In this lifestyle, adhd traits such as impatience may have been beneficial.
Refers to benefits researchwhere a professor at the University of Pennsylvania David Barack and his colleagues made more than 450 people play a digital food procurement game.
The participants also completed a questionnaire surveying ADHD traits. It cleared up concentration difficulties and impulsivity.
The study was published by Proceedings of the Royal Society B – science journal.
In play had to collect as many berries as possible from virtual bushes in eight minutes using the computer cursor.
The player had the option to stay on the same bush or change it to another one with perhaps more berries. The problem of selection is probably familiar to today’s berry growers.
Actually, however, the game imitated the situation faced by a hunter-gatherer, where one had to choose whether to make maximum use of an already found treasure or leave it in the hope that the next place would yield more.
In the explorers’ game, changing to the next bush meant a short loss of time, just as in real life, someone looking for a new apaja takes time to find it.
The player thus had to weigh whether to collect all the berries in one place or to switch to another bush despite the loss of time.
In play impatience hit the bread.
Namely, it turned out that the berry harvest was greater in those with more adhd traits. They spent an average of four seconds less time on one bush than the others and collected an average of 602 berries during the game. The catch of the others remained at 521.
“Humans and other great apes are sophisticated foragers, but like almost any other animal, we tend to stay too long in the open and overexploit it,” Barack explain for New Scientist magazine.
“Moving on early is beneficial because it reduces overuse. This is where the impulsivity of ADHD helps.”
According to him, there are situations in today’s society where a similar quickness pays off.
For example, when a student studying for an exam tries to understand something, he may look for help from one source first. If the first source doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere, he quickly moves to another, which can help him move forward more efficiently.
Research group according to them, their results support the hypothesis that ADHD is an evolutionary adaptation that promotes foraging.
According to the researchers, this would explain why ADHD is so common and widespread.
Department of Health and Welfare by more than eight percent of school-aged Finnish boys and more than three percent of girls have an ADHD diagnosis.
The reconciliation idea is supported by data from Kenya’s Ariaal nomads. Namely, more gene forms associated with adhd have been found in them than usual. In their life, the search for pastures for cattle is also an important part.
The way of life may therefore have favored genes that cause a more impatient shift from pastures to others.