All right.
Welcome to Hacking your ADHD.
I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD.
On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to
help you work with your ADHD Brain.
Today I'm joined by Sky Waterson for our research recap series.
In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive
into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any
practical takeaways that we can give you.
In this episode, we're gonna be discussing a paper called Brain
potentials reveal reduced attention and error processing during a monetary
go, no go task in procrastination.
And this is a study that's looking at how procrastinators handle
mistakes and try to stay focused, especially when tasks get harder.
And how those differences in rewards and punishment affects those outcomes.
So a lot there.
And, uh, I'm gonna tell you, this paper has a ton of acronyms
and so, uh, let's get into
Yeah, a ton of acronyms.
But we love our neuroscience papers because they show us how
the brain is working differently, and I got asked a question about
that on a podcast yesterday, and it's nice to be able to say.
Yes, this is happening.
This is different.
Okay, so what they were looking at is they basically said, you know,
procrastination, which we all know, but just to give you a reminder, is a
phenomenon which people voluntarily.
delay intended and necessary and or personally important tasks despite
knowing that delaying will have more negative than positive consequences.
We've all done that many times probably today.
And so this is a huge thing people talk about all the time,
so it's really important to get a sense of what's going on.
Yeah, there's, and especially going what are the outcomes of these
procrastination things like what causes, what's the outcome of procrastination
beyond the task not getting
done?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So they were looking at, um, they basically had 179 students.
Only 48 of those were male, which is quite.
Unusual, usually more males.
Um, but they weren't specifically looking at ADHD, they were
looking at procrastination.
And I thought that was maybe an interesting difference in how they
usually, they're like, we, this is how we figured out if these people have ADHD.
They didn't do that in this study.
They were looking for, they were working in, looking at people who.
Just struggled.
They, actually excluded participants with psychiatric or neurological illnesses.
It was really a study where they were going, Hey, this is a like mental
profile of what happens with ADHD and we're just gonna look at that.
What did you think about that, by the way?
So yeah, it was a very interesting study design being going, yeah, we're going
to have this aspect of not taking ADHD into account and just using that profile.
And there are some great ways to like that.
opens up a lot of
Pathways to like, oh, we're not just looking specifically ADHD,
we're looking at what people with ADHD do, which is procrastinate.
and I think that is why I have that problem with this design is where I'm
like, this is what they're saying exists.
And I'm like, Because often like looking at the why behind
procrastination is a bigger issue than just saying procrastination happens.
And with executive dysfunction, that changes why procrastination is happening.
yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So basically what they did was this was a combination of
an activity and brain scans.
So people were doing a modified version of a go no go task, which is basically.
Looking at, um, yeah, how they are responding to things that say like,
you've gotta start, you've gotta stop all of those different, things
for monetary rewards specifically.
And there was conversation about that, and then they were looking at, um,
yeah, F MRIs and, um, and making sure that, uh, trying to scan their brain,
which I don't know how, how helpful did you feel like the brain scan?
it was interesting.
Yeah, it was certainly interesting, but it, I don't know.
I felt like it was a step that they didn't need with just looking at, it
does give a lot of oh, this is how the brain is interacting during these
tasks.
Great.
But the more important takeaways for this study all came from
the results of the No go.
No the go.
No go.
Part of it.
And while they did relate the brain studies aspects of it, I was like, that's
just a additional piece of data there.
That's interesting, but not actually giving me meaningful information.
yeah, exactly.
It was nice to see, but it wasn't, it wasn't necessary, which is,
which is not always the case.
Like usually, um, usually it's the opposite.
Um, when you're doing these kind of brain scans.
And I do think it's important here to be like, Hey, we're not neuroscience
Oh yeah.
so that, that might be why we're like playing like, yeah,
this isn't that important.
This isn't what is interesting to us.
We're interested in the actual results.
And the neuroscientists might be going like, yeah, but
Yeah, very true.
Very
look at how the brain is lighting up.
And I'm like, yeah, I don't have enough background information
to make that relevant to me.
I haven't done, and yeah, I've done post-grad neuroscience, but.
It still didn't hit.
So if someone else has something that really mattered,
like definitely let us know.
That would be amazing.
Maybe we'll have you on.
but yeah, so basically they were looking at post era slowing.
So they found that, post era slowing was increased in people who were
high academic procrastinators.
what, which was really interesting.
It's the,
now I've got another acronym that I forgot, the ERN, the
error related negativity.
Like that they, yeah, they were seeing this at as a, maybe related
to problems and how they're allocating those brain resources.
And this is why they were like really wanting to look at those brain scans.
It's oh, how are we, how are they allocating these resources?
these people that are,
Academic procrastinators are doing this thing where they are having
more problems, allocating resources and based on how they did the study,
they're like, oh, this is, you know, like reduced motivational engagement.
And I'm like, it's really hard to accurately measure in a study that is
money was involved, you have the financial motivation there, but it's not, you know,
it's like the difference between getting.
$5 or $10 or something,
Mm-hmm.
when you're talking about this, then what they found was that they discussed Yeah.
Procrastinators had problems with executive control.
That's what they theorized.
Um, and that they needed time to reorient their attention from
committing a mistake to response execution in the following trial.
Now I highlighted that 'cause I thought that was a really.
Solid, you know, suggestion in terms of just the way that it describes how people
work, you know, the way that people, um, with, you know, more of this, which they
then discussed as potentially having ADHD, they need time to reorientate it
reminded me of that bleed effect, that transition time conversation as well.
Yeah.
And it was also then really interesting too with the, differences between the,
regular go no go versus the like higher intensity one.
which, they had that like twist where it's oh yeah, the hard level.
You now have procrastinators had a, significant dip in
their performance because.
Which is, this is where I find it very interesting 'cause this is where you
see that executive function, if you are.
So lemme describe what the hard level was first.
So in the regular No go, go, no go.
It's like you have, you know, a series of digits that are put on the
screen, like, and then, you're like one through two, you push go and then.
The rest of the digits you just don't, or something, you know?
So there's like two things and you, and they're measuring how
quickly you are pushing the button.
But with the hard mode, you have to like really think about it because
it's now, you have, a specific digit you're not supposed to push anything on.
And then also if a digit is repeated, even if it's a go.
So it's one was the go and you had one.
Okay, go first.
Then it repeats the one.
Don't push it for the second time, so it's really amping up that oh, I have
to think about what's on the screen and what previously happened, and so I can
actually see being like, I basically be like pounding the key and forgetting it
all the time, being like, I'm trying to get fast, but I'm not doing it right.
It's also a funny one, because it does remind me of there is a relationship
between ADHD, and these kinds of things and dyspraxia, and I feel like there
is a conversation here about just general ability to move your body.
Fast enough and all of those kinds of things coming into play as well.
Like how good are your reaction times?
I don't know if that's specifically related to ADHD,
but, but it is a conversation.
Like I, I think I would struggle to do that just because my body
and my brain are not working at the same speed, generally speaking.
Yeah.
And it would also be interesting to see this with like
frustration tolerance going in,
Hmm.
to do it in the beginning and then being like, I'm not getting it 'cause
I'm going, trying to go too fast.
And now I'm trying to
the other way and I'm going too slow now.
And it's,
Yeah.
Like for example, if they, and okay, we're, we're getting
a little bit away from it.
Um, but, you know, if they had, had somebody who was a procrast,
an academic procrastinator who was also played a sport, whether
that would've had a difference.
It just, it, feels like it's a lot of.
And I, these are always the cases.
I'm not saying this isn't, this is, you know, a really good study.
They tried to, think of everything, but it's just a curiosity.
Yeah.
And really if we're like just looking at this paper overall, yeah, there are
some great things that we can take away.
it's like just looking at this, procrastination as like this
fundamentally linked to our like attentional fluctuations and the.
Very much implies that, if we're just focusing on something like
time management, that isn't going to help with procrastination because
that's not the problem that's
we're dealing with.
Yeah, that's a really, really good point.
Can you give me an example of, what this would look like in real life?
I think for specifically like this is like being like, I
have a deadline coming up and.
In a month and being like, oh, I'm going to, trying to manage your time
there beforehand is really hard.
If we're looking at this purely from a procrastination, time management, oh, I'm
gonna work at these times, all that stuff.
This is oh, I need to have a bunch of other strategies in place so that
I'm not procrastinating on this.
Just having that month deadline is not enough for me
to.
Do that.
That's, and it doesn't matter how well I'm putting together my calendar,
if I don't have other things put in place, like accountability,
like specific times I'm working with someone for the accountability and like
working out the steps that need to happen.
Yeah, exactly.
It's funny actually, 'cause this is an academic example, and I always think of
my clients, I've had clients in academia who write papers for a living, found
that they almost entirely had to write papers with a team for that reason.
Like the deadline, the single deadline was not.
Doable and they procrastinated, a lot.
And, in fact, that's why we're here doing this, doing this because
it helps us both read academic articles together, um, as well.
Yeah.
And yeah, I think there's a lot that we can take out from
this being like, oh yeah, okay.
So procrastination isn't a failure of time management.
It's a failure of other attentional difficulties.
And if that's the case, let's not focus on time management.
Let's focus on things I can do to amp up my motivation.
Amp up my thing.
Tiny amounts of money probably won't do it, but,
having, rewards are often great for ADHD,
Yeah, 100%.
So they found that, yeah, the present data confirmed previous findings of
executive dysfunctioning and academic procrastination, and they were observed at
the neural and behavioral level, even when the task was relatively easy, but they
became more pronounced behaviorally when the working memory load increased, which
is, something we talk about all the time.
That idea of memory and, you know, they had.
it really did.
This is the bit where they talked about ADHD.
They talked about executive and attentional deficits were observed,
are observed in ADHD and suggested to be related to cortical arri
arousal caused by decreased tonic activity of the noradrenergic system.
So they really were going in on saying like, okay, this is probably
related to ADHD, but they really only brought that in at the end.