Examining the relations among working memory capacity, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptomology, and conscious experience

Abstract

Van den Driessche et al. (2017) found that children and young adults with more Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms report more mind blanking than those with fewer ADHD symptoms and that non-medicated children with ADHD reported less mind wandering and more mind blanking than medicated children with ADHD. Van den Driessche et al. speculated that medication facilitated executive control and that executive resources support mind wandering (and on-task thought). Besides describing the conscious experience of those with ADHD symptomology, these findings bear on the theoretical debate of executive functions’ role in conscious experience. Some argue that executive functions support mind wandering (Levinson, Smallwood, & Davidson, 2012; Smallwood, 2010, 2013), while others argue that mind wandering situationally results from a lack (or failure) of executive control (McVay & Kane, 2010; Meier, 2019). Here, we conducted a study like Van den Driessche et al.’s study with young adults (Experiment 2, 2017) and tested the associations between ADHD symptomology and conscious experience. Rather than speculating about the effects of medication, we directly measured executive functioning (via complex span tasks). Like Van den Driessche et al., we observed a positive association between mind blanking and ADHD, but we detected no evidence supporting the claim that executive functions support mind wandering. We also assessed the relative associations between task performance metrics and reports of mind blanking and mind wandering. We did not detect differential performance associations between those thought reports. [Preregistration, data, analysis scripts, and output are available via the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/z3awm/].