In a recent post, I wrote about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The main point of that post was that ADHD, in my opinion, is overdiagnosed and many of our kids, and even adults, are overmedicated. If you want to read a more informed opinion about this, check out the book Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax.
That being said, I've repeatedly had another thought about ADHD symptoms. I'm not sure why we didn't see more kids with these symptoms when I was in primary school. As, I've said before, I think that the behaviors associated with ADHD simply would not have been tolerated. Perhaps these kids still struggled with a lack of concentration but in general, symptoms of ADHD would not have been adaptive in the world in which I was raised. Back then, concentration and focus were still necessary to perform many of the tasks of daily living.
This has changed, however, and I actually think we might be moving toward a point in our society where ADHD-like "symptoms" may be adaptive and even more the norm. In our professional lives, people do not stay at one job for 45 years anymore. They change every 5-7 years. We're also increasingly asked to "multitask" on the job, often having to juggle several competing physical and/or cognitive demands. Our news, entertainment, and general information no longer require much of a time commitment and comes to us in snippets and sound bites. People talk on the phone or text message while driving. It seems to me that increasingly the ability to focus and attend to a single given task for extended periods of time is becoming devalued. In our current society, people are rewarded for short-term concentration and rapidly jumping from one task to the next. It's interesting to watch. It is almost as if the more people we label as having ADHD or similar symptoms, the more the world seems designed to accomodate them. Or, perhaps more likely, the world has just been moving in this direction due to technological advances and the increase in apparent ADHD that we see is simple a manisfestation of our adaptation to societal and technological changes.
Regardless, I think the point is that we can no longer separate human culture, and even biology, from technology. If evolution truly occurs because some adaptations are more successful than others, then those people who can most readily adapt to and utilize ever-changing technology will be the most successful in our species and those traits will be passed on. Just as societies with large domestic animal populations tend to grow larger due to increased protein in their diet, daily use of advanced technology will likely lead to cognitive and behavioral changes in various groups. I'm not a very ADHD-like person. The qualities that have thus far made me successful may not be the same ones that lead to success in the future. Then again, some as yet unforeseen technology could throw everything on its ear. I guess this is what makes the evolution of our planet so fascinating to me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
This is fascinating. And it's too early for me to really even handle. Now, I can accept that I myself may be outmoded because I refuse to play the text-messaging game. But if what you're suggesting is my choice is an evolutionary one, then dag, bubba, that's some scary shit. Are you saying that the trait of paying attention is going to be evolved out of our species? I'm already feeling the urge to head for the hills, and now this.
I do think that increasingly the choices we make regarding technology will affect our eveloution, just as our choices of food and habitat location have. Here's the really mind-boggling part: technology today moves much faster than evolution so while certain skills necessary to utilize technology effectively should be adapative and incorporated into our evolution, technology will probably also help those of us who lack the trait.
To put it concretely, lets say that our continued success as a species is somewhat dependant upon being able to have a certain level of eye-hand coordination such as you might see with people who are really proficient at complex video games. If these skills really start to fit into our occupational and leisure life, these traits would be adapative and be more like to continue to get passed on. That would be bad luck for those of us without good hand-eye coordination. BUT, technology is progressing so rapidly that perhaps there will be a chip or some type of "brain training" that could be done to help the rest of us develop this skill. So, technology alters evolution but it also compensates for "deficiencies."
I don't think that paying attention will be evolved out but I see the type of attention changing. In animal studies we differentiate between selective and sustained attention. I think sustained attention is becoming less valued in high tech society but selective attention (the ability to perceive small or quick changes or stimuli) may be getting more important. I think a lot of ADHD folks are better at selective vs. sustained attention and thus might actually be better suited to high tech cultures.
Of course, I could be completely full of shit.
Sorry for the typos. I'm at work and throwing the comment together quickly. :-)
I understand what you are saying for the most part, but for evolution to really favor those that have better hand-eye coordination, the ones who are lesser will have to stop reproducing because of their shortcoming. In other words, there must be a link between them being worse at that sort of multi-tasking, fast-paced lifestyle and their inability to have their children survive (or, for they, themselves, to survive.)
I get what you're saying, that this ability is favored by our society now, as opposed to when we were young. And yeah, those kids may succeed in life more. But will they succeed in reproduction over the millions of "lesser" and "not-so-adapted" folks out there?
I guess what I'm saying is that I fail to see how something like this can bring about a real evolutionary change in the physical organism; as opposed to a societal preference.
The true test would be finding an actual change in these kids as they are born. Obviously, that would take a lonnnnng time to verify. It might happen if our society was less PC. However, we're so kind to the "lesser" folks out there, that I don't see any preference for those of us that fit better in today's lifestyle; at least not one in which evolution can take hold with its cruel and cold knife.
Boring - Thoughtful comment. I guess I don't always think of evolution in terms of life or death. There are more people with dark hair and skin in tropical locations but people with light hair and skin never died out. We still have vestigial genetic material lying dormant in our DNA. I don't necessarily think that people with less hand-eye coordination will have fewer kids or that their kids won't survive but again, I think this is partly due to technology so it's hard to know how it would play out if that did not come into play. Medical advances had made it so that children who may have died in the past, maybe rightly so, are now surviving. There's a reason that premature babies usually die without heroic intervention. The most premature of them tend to have chronic health problems. Nature sorts this out by killing them. Of course, we can save them now and treat any illnesses they may develop.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that evolution of a species doesn't necessarily mean that all the individuals that don't have the more evolved characteristic die out. People who are more successful in our society have access to better food, better health care, etc. I think if there's any characteristic that allows people to have those advantages, then over the loooong term, those people and their offspring will fair better and that characteristic will be likely to be passed on.
Then again, as I said, I could be completely wrong-headed in my thinking and full of crap.
Nah, I think it's an interesting discussion. What you're suggesting is that the wider societal acceptance of and/or dependence upon wildly fast-moving technology will leave some folks behind and may ultimately slightly alter our adaptive traits, albeit pretty far down the line.
Still, it's a bummer. It's proven that learning to play piano or some other instrument certainly contributes to hand-eye coordination. But you don't see a lot of folks texting each other about how their piano jury went. Ok, maybe at Eastman, but not on the school bus.
Post a Comment