Do Stimulant Medications for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Enhance Cognition?

Characteristic symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have been recognized in the medical literature for over 200 years. The earliest known clinical description is found in the book by the Scottish physician Sir Alexander Crichton, entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Origins of Mental Derangement (Crichton, 1798, as cited in Baumeister et al., 2011). In the chapter, “Attention, and its Diseases” (p. 254), Crichton notes that these conditions make people “incapable of attending with constancy to any one object of education” (p. 271), cause “mental restlessness”, “walking up and down”, and the “fidgets” (p. 272). Although Crichton was clearly describing disorders of attention, George Still, a British pediatrician, is usually credited with being the first person to describe the syndrome that has since been recognized as ADHD. Dr. Still gave a series of lectures on Some Abnormal Psychical Conditions in Children in 1902, in which he noted that even some children with normal intelligence may exhibit a “lack of attention which is very noticeable...[and which] no doubt accounts to a considerable extent for backwardness in school acquirements” (Still, 1902b, p. 1081 as cited in Baumeister et al., 2011).