The Ability to Direct Attention in Working Memory Is Not Impaired in Adults With Symptoms of ADHD.

Objective: Neurotypical individuals can prioritize particularly valuable information in working memory. This is a well-replicated effect, demonstrated across a wide variety of task factors and age groups. However, it is not clear if individuals with symptoms of ADHD are able to do this effectively, as there is some evidence this group struggle to allocate attention in working memory tasks. Two experiments were conducted online to investigate this.

Method: Participants were presented with series of four colored shapes, and asked to report the color of each shape in a counterbalanced order following a brief delay. In some trials (equal value condition), all shapes were equally valuable with the correct recall of each shape gaining the participant 2 points. In other trials (differential value condition), the first item presented during the encoding phase was more valuable than the rest (5 point for the first item vs. 1 point for the other items). Trial-by-trial feedback was either provided (Experiment 1) or omitted (Experiment 2).

Results: Across both experiments, there was a clear prioritization effect at the first (targeted) serial position, with higher accuracy in the differential value condition relative to the equal value condition. There were also clear costs at the less valuable serial positions. These effects did not differ as a function of ADHD symptoms. There were also no significant correlations between scores on the Adult ADHD Self-Report Screener and the prioritization effects.

Conclusion: Taken together, these findings demonstrates that the ability to prioritize particularly valuable information in working memory is not impaired in individuals with symptoms of ADHD.