Question: Hello Dr Barkley,
  An issue I seem unable to come across in the literature is the extent to which ADHD is an impairment in abstract fields such as mathematics and theoretical physics.  
  
  In one of your talks in which you spoke about the relatively poor performance of neuropsychological test batteries predicting impairment compared to rating scales you mentioned that “cold cognition” is significantly impaired, and mentioned that no one cares a lick about digit span backwards.  If someone finds that fields like creative problem solving in math are what really excites them to what extent do you expect them to be impaired in such a field and do you expect pharmacological intervention could normalize performance or ameliorate a large chunk of the disparity?
  
  
  Thanks for all the work you do, having a top flight researcher communicate the current scientific consensus in great detail is enormously helpful.
Answer: Great question and for which there is no research on that very specialized group of people.  But in general when I mentioned cold cognition I meant the usual working memory type tests that deal with remember digit sequences or spatial locations.  And while the average person with ADHD struggles with such tasks the deficit is not so apparent there as it is in real world functioning as detected by rating scales.  Hence the problem of low ecological validity of those tests and their poor diagnostic accuracy for ADHD.  While I would expect someone so talented in such a complex and abstract field who had ADHD would be superior in their working memory for these ideas compared to neurotypicals, you might still see the deficits compared to others working in the same fields.  But not always.  There are individual differences in the EF deficits that go along with ADHD such that some may not be so bad at working memory but awful on time management or emotion regulation others may show a different patterning to the deficits.
content: Q: Hello Dr Barkley,
  An issue I seem unable to come across in the literature is the extent to which ADHD is an impairment in abstract fields such as mathematics and theoretical physics.  
  
  In one of your talks in which you spoke about the relatively poor performance of neuropsychological test batteries predicting impairment compared to rating scales you mentioned that “cold cognition” is significantly impaired, and mentioned that no one cares a lick about digit span backwards.  If someone finds that fields like creative problem solving in math are what really excites them to what extent do you expect them to be impaired in such a field and do you expect pharmacological intervention could normalize performance or ameliorate a large chunk of the disparity?
  
  
  Thanks for all the work you do, having a top flight researcher communicate the current scientific consensus in great detail is enormously helpful.
   Ans: Great question and for which there is no research on that very specialized group of people.  But in general when I mentioned cold cognition I meant the usual working memory type tests that deal with remember digit sequences or spatial locations.  And while the average person with ADHD struggles with such tasks the deficit is not so apparent there as it is in real world functioning as detected by rating scales.  Hence the problem of low ecological validity of those tests and their poor diagnostic accuracy for ADHD.  While I would expect someone so talented in such a complex and abstract field who had ADHD would be superior in their working memory for these ideas compared to neurotypicals, you might still see the deficits compared to others working in the same fields.  But not always.  There are individual differences in the EF deficits that go along with ADHD such that some may not be so bad at working memory but awful on time management or emotion regulation others may show a different patterning to the deficits.