It’s a familiar refrain: telling someone with ADHD to try and focus harder. Their attention often drifts, leading to missed details, and their performance on complex tasks can reflect that. Many assume that a wandering mind equates to underachievement.
However, new research paints a more nuanced picture. A recent puzzle test involving nearly 300 participants found that those whose attention frequently wandered were actually able to solve creative problems at a higher rate than their counterparts, and they didn’t seem to consciously analyze their answers at all.
ADHD and Creative Thinking
Researchers at Drexel University wanted to explore a longstanding suspicion among cognitive scientists—that individuals displaying strong ADHD symptoms often exhibit exceptional inventiveness. Earlier studies attempting to draw a connection yielded weak and inconsistent results.
Hannah Maisano, a doctoral student at Drexel, collaborated with senior author John Kounios, a cognitive neuroscientist with two decades of experience studying the neuroscience of insight, to conduct the experiment.
Creative thinking can emerge in two distinct ways. There’s the slow, methodical process in which you work through ideas until inspiration strikes. Then there’s the sudden, almost jarring realization that comes like a flash.
Psychologists term these spontaneous insights as “Aha moments.” The process that involves careful analysis is known as deliberate thinking. Both approaches can reach the same solution, but they traverse different cognitive pathways to get there.
Inside the Word Puzzles
Maisano’s research team gathered 299 undergraduates aged between 18 and 33, who undertook the Compound Remote Associates test—a creativity assessment widely used for over two decades.
Participants were shown three seemingly unrelated words and tasked with finding a fourth word that connected them. For example, with the words “pine,” “crab,” and “sauce,” the common answer is “apple”—as in pineapple, crabapple, and applesauce.
After each correct answer, participants indicated how they arrived at their solution. Did it come after some deliberation, or did it just appear fully formed in their minds?
Across the Spectrum
Each participant completed the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale, a common questionnaire assessing inattention, impulsivity, and restlessness. The researchers then categorized them into high and low ADHD symptom groups.
Interestingly, both groups managed to solve a similar number of puzzles, but their methods differed significantly. Those with pronounced symptoms tended to rely heavily on creative insights, where answers suddenly emerged rather than being built stepwise.
In contrast, individuals with milder symptoms achieved their solutions through a balance of both intuition and systematic analysis, varying their approach based on the task.
“We found that individuals reporting the strongest ADHD symptoms relied significantly more on insight to solve problems,” Maisano noted, adding that they seemed to prefer unconscious, associative processing leading to creative breakthroughs.
An Unexpected Curve
Then came an unexpected twist. When evaluating the total number of puzzles solved, the group with moderate symptom levels performed the worst. Both the high-symptom and low-symptom groups outdid them noticeably.
The results formed a U-shaped curve: Strong executive function aided one group in analyzing effectively, while loose executive control allowed the other to excel through intuition. The individuals stuck in the middle lacked a distinct advantage.
“Having either very high or very low executive control can be advantageous for creative problem-solving, though the paths to getting there differ,” explained Chesebrough, a co-author who began the study as a doctoral candidate at Drexel.
ADHD-Linked Creative Advantages
Cognitive scientists propose a mechanism for this phenomenon. The brain seems to have an attentional filter, which typically blocks out distractions, allowing focus on relevant information. When operating optimally, it keeps irrelevant thoughts at bay.
A looser filter, researchers believe, permits odd and loosely connected ideas to enter awareness. While this is often a drawback, it may actually be beneficial for creative problem solving.
Previous studies hinted at creative advantages linked to ADHD, but they often involved open-ended tasks with multiple correct answers. This study is notable for showing a similar advantage on a puzzle with a singular correct solution.
What This Changes
For years, ADHD has been primarily framed in terms of its negative impact. This new research contributes a fresh perspective, highlighting a fast, intuitive approach to questions that links strong ADHD symptoms to measurable benefits in creative tasks.
Educators and employers who tend to prioritize analysis may now see the value in accommodating intuitive methods, especially for individuals who may be penalized by conventional practices.
According to Kounios, the practical insight is clear: “Recognizing these strengths could help people leverage their natural problem-solving style in various settings—be it school, work, or daily life.”
ADHD hasn’t transformed into a superpower overnight; the challenges tied to inattention and impulsivity remain significant. However, this research suggests that the cognitive profile of ADHD is no longer solely a catalog of deficits.
The study appears in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
