Hsu Chia-Fen, Eastwood John D, Toplak Maggie E
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, York University, TorontoON, Canada; Department of Psychology, Chung Shan Medical UniversityTaichung, Taiwan; Clinical Psychological Room, Chung Shan Medical University HospitalTaichung, Taiwan.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, York University, Toronto ON, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2017 Mar 21;8:407. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00407. eCollection 2017.
The avoidance of mental effort is a symptom criterion for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but the experience of mental effort has received relatively little attention in the empirical study of individuals at-risk for ADHD. We explored a novel method to assess the experience of effort and discomfort during a working memory task in a sample of young adults at-risk and not at-risk for ADHD. A sample of 235 undergraduate students (Mean age = 21.02, 86 males) were included in this study. Based on an ADHD-screener (ASRS), 136 participants met criteria for the ADHD-risk group and 99 were in the non-ADHD risk group. Individuals at-risk for ADHD reported higher mental effort and discomfort than individuals not at-risk for ADHD, even when performance on the working memory task was comparable or statistically controlled. Mental effort required and discomfort were more strongly correlated for at-risk compared to not at-risk participants. Individuals at-risk for ADHD displayed a stronger correlation between mental effort required and actual accuracy, but individuals not at-risk for ADHD displayed a stronger association between perceived accuracy and actual accuracy for the hardest experimental conditions. The most intense moment of effort required predicted retrospective discomfort ratings of the task in the ADHD-risk group, but not in the non-risk group. The subjective experience of mental effort is an important and viable construct that should be more carefully defined and measured. In particular, the experience of effort required (or how taxing a task is) differentiated between individuals at-risk and individuals not at-risk for ADHD in the present study. Whereas previous ADHD research has explored effort exerted, the present work demonstrated that investigating the experience of being mentally taxed might provide a productive line of investigation that could be used to advance our understanding of the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying the regulation of effort in individuals at-risk of ADHD.
避免脑力劳动是注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）的一个症状标准，但在ADHD高危个体的实证研究中，脑力劳动的体验相对较少受到关注。我们探索了一种新方法，以评估高危和非高危ADHD的年轻成年人样本在工作记忆任务期间的努力和不适体验。本研究纳入了235名本科生样本（平均年龄=21.02岁，86名男性）。基于ADHD筛查量表（ASRS），136名参与者符合ADHD高危组标准，99名属于非ADHD风险组。即使在工作记忆任务的表现相当或进行了统计控制的情况下，ADHD高危个体报告的脑力劳动和不适程度也高于非ADHD高危个体。与非高危参与者相比，高危个体所需的脑力劳动和不适之间的相关性更强。ADHD高危个体在所需脑力劳动和实际准确率之间表现出更强的相关性，但在最困难的实验条件下，非ADHD高危个体在感知准确率和实际准确率之间表现出更强的相关性。在ADHD高危组中，所需努力最强烈的时刻预测了对该任务的回顾性不适评分，但在非风险组中并非如此。脑力劳动的主观体验是一个重要且可行的概念，应更仔细地定义和测量。特别是，在本研究中，所需努力的体验（或一项任务的难度）区分了ADHD高危个体和非高危个体。虽然先前的ADHD研究探讨了付出的努力，但目前的研究表明，调查脑力负担的体验可能提供一条富有成效的研究途径，可用于增进我们对ADHD高危个体努力调节背后的认知和情感机制的理解。
