The Hypercuriosity Theory of ADHD
An Interview with Anne-Laure Le Cunff by Gurjot Brar
It is an absolute pleasure to introduce to our readers Anne-Laure Le Cunff who recently published a paper in Evolutionary Psychological Science titled:
“Distractibility and Impulsivity in ADHD as an Evolutionary Mismatch of High Trait Curiosity.”
Anne-Laure is a neuroscientist, writer and entrepreneur with a PhD in Psychology & Neuroscience from King’s College London. She is the founder of Ness Labs, an online platform that teaches knowledge workers how to leverage their curiosity. Her first book, Tiny Experiments, will be published by Penguin Random House in March 2024.
Anne-Laure’s paper presents a falsifiable theory for distractibility and impulsivity in ADHD as an evolutionary mismatch of high trait curiosity. This theory builds upon previous work in the field (including Swanepoel et al., 2017 and Salali et al, 2019) but also combines relevant neuroscientific and psychological findings (e.g. Barack et al., 2024; Damerius et al., 2017; Marvin et al., 2020).
Hello! Please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got interested in evolutionary psychiatry and ADHD.
I recently completed my PhD at the ADHD Research Lab within the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London. Through my research, I became increasingly aware that much of the existing ADHD literature takes a deficit-based approach, focusing primarily on the challenges and impairments associated with the condition.
However, the persistence of ADHD-related traits in the population, combined with emerging research highlighting potential advantages of ADHD, suggested to me that there might be more to the story. This led me to explore whether these traits might have served an evolutionary advantage in our ancestral past. The possibility that what we now label as “symptoms” might have once been adaptive features—this is what inspired me to dive into the existing evolutionary research and ultimately write this paper.
Your paper centres on trait curiosity, how do you define it and how is hypercuriosity related to ADHD?
In the paper, I define trait curiosity as the general tendency to seek out new information and experiences, drawing from the state-trait curiosity inventory which includes markers such as “new situations capture my attention,” “I enjoy exploring new places,” and “I like to experience new sensations.” What I call hypercuriosity manifests as an intensified, impulsive desire to know and explore.
Hypercuriosity is related to ADHD in several ways: individuals with ADHD often demonstrate heightened novelty-seeking behaviors, show intense focus on topics of interest, and experience stronger urges to explore new information and experiences. Beyond all this experimental data, this connection is supported by qualitative research suggesting that ADHDers relate their curiosity to their tendencies toward both impulsivity and distraction.
“What I call hypercuriosity manifests as an intensified, impulsive desire to know and explore.”
And how does your theory build on previous work in the area?
The theory builds upon several important previous evolutionary accounts of ADHD, particularly the work of Jensen et al. (1997) and Swanepoel et al. (2017). While these earlier theories focused on novelty seeking and vigilance as key traits in evolutionary accounts of ADHD, my theory introduces curiosity as a distinct construct that integrates these traits and provides a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between exploratory tendencies, distractibility, and impulsivity in ADHD. The paper extends previous evolutionary theories by highlighting the specific role of curiosity-driven exploration in shaping the adaptive value of ADHD traits in ancestral environments.
I see, could you briefly explain how your theory identifies mismatch as relevant to ADHD?
The theory examines how traits that were likely adaptive in ancestral environments have become challenging in modern contexts. In ancestral environments characterized by scarce resources and unpredictable risks, high trait curiosity would have been beneficial for survival, driving individuals to explore new territories, discover resources, and remain vigilant to environmental changes. However, in today’s industrialized societies, where environments are predominantly stable and information-rich, this same trait can manifest as distractibility and impulsivity.
The mismatch is particularly evident in modern educational and occupational settings, which often require sustained attention on predetermined tasks and discourage exploratory behavior. This creates a disconnect between the natural tendencies of individuals with ADHD and the demands of modern environments. The paper also points to genomic analyses showing that ADHD-associated alleles have steadily decreased in frequency since Paleolithic times, suggesting a long-term evolutionary trend away from these traits as environmental conditions changed.
“The mismatch is particularly evident in modern educational and occupational settings, which often require sustained attention on predetermined tasks and discourage exploratory behavior.”
Would there be evolutionary benefits of high trait curiosity?
The evolutionary benefits of high trait curiosity can be observed through several lenses. Among the BaYaka hunter-gatherers of Congo, children learn subsistence skills through curiosity-driven play and participation in foraging activities. This learning approach, guided by natural curiosity, has been crucial for survival in hunter-gatherer societies.
The DRD4 gene, particularly the 7R allele associated with ADHD and novelty seeking, appears more frequently in nomadic populations compared to sedentary ones, suggesting an adaptive advantage in environments requiring exploration and adaptation to new situations.
High trait curiosity also likely supported vigilance, allowing for better monitoring of surroundings and potential threats. Finally, the paper also discusses the “busy-body” mode of curiosity, characterized by attentional shifts and broad information seeking, which would have facilitated the discovery of new resources and information in ancestral environments.
You mention the captivity effect in your paper, how does this relate to your theory on ADHD?
The captivity effect in non-human primates reveals that captive animals exhibit higher levels of curiosity compared to their wild counterparts, which is hypothesized to result from reduced risk and increased free time in captive settings (Forss & Willems, 2022). This provides an important parallel for understanding ADHD and curiosity in modern environments.
In nature, high trait curiosity would have been risky and thus likely limited to a subset of individuals to balance the potential benefits of exploration with its inherent dangers. In our modern “captive-like” environment with fewer immediate survival pressures, the expression of curiosity may be less constrained by natural selection pressures that would have historically limited its prevalence and intensity. While this might have led to generally increased curiosity levels across the population, hypercuriosity may represent an extreme manifestation of this trait that contributes to what is now diagnosed as distractibility and impulsivity in ADHD within our modern structured environments.
“The captivity effect in non-human primates reveals that captive animals exhibit higher levels of curiosity compared to their wild counterparts, which is hypothesized to result from reduced risk and increased free time in captive settings”
What is the differential susceptibility to media effects model (DSMM) and how is it relevant to your theory? I had not heard of this before reading your paper and its fascinating.
The DSMM proposes that media response states, including cognitive, emotional, and excitative states, mediate the relationship between media exposure and various outcomes (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013). In the context of ADHD and high trait curiosity, this model helps explain how modern media environments might interact with and potentially exacerbate ADHD-related behaviors. Fast-paced media can lead to increased arousal, and with frequent exposure, baseline arousal levels may decrease, potentially contributing to attention-related challenges.
The DSMM is particularly relevant to the evolutionary mismatch theory because it helps explain how modern digital environments, with their constant stream of novel stimuli, might interact with the high trait curiosity characteristic of ADHD. While curiosity-driven exploration would have been limited by natural constraints in ancestral environments, today’s digital landscape provides unlimited opportunities for novelty seeking, potentially overwhelming natural attention mechanisms that evolved in very different conditions.
You mention in your paper that your hypothesis predicts that individuals diagnosed with ADHD will exhibit higher levels of curiosity in response to motivationally salient stimuli, please could you give us some examples?
According to the hypercuriosity hypothesis, individuals with ADHD would show heightened curiosity towards motivationally salient stimuli—stimuli that have high incentive value and perceived potential for reward. These could include novel objects, potential threats, unexpected changes, and unfamiliar information. For example, in a learning environment, this might manifest as intense engagement with new, unexpected, or personally interesting topics while showing less sustained attention to routine tasks.
The theory predicts that when presented with potentially rewarding new information or experiences, individuals with ADHD would demonstrate stronger exploratory responses compared to those without ADHD. This can explain why individuals with ADHD can experience both high distractibility in some contexts and hyperfocus in others, depending on the motivational salience of the stimuli.
And how could your theory be tested?
The theory could be tested through several approaches. Neuroimaging studies could explore common neural substrates during tasks that elicit curiosity, distractibility, and impulsivity in individuals with ADHD. This would help establish whether these behaviors share underlying neural mechanisms. Cognitive modeling could be employed to simulate how different levels of curiosity affect attention allocation in environments with varying density of information, comparing outcomes for ADHD and non-ADHD models. Finally, studies could investigate whether curiosity-driven exploration leads to better outcomes (e.g., learning, problem-solving) in ADHD individuals in open-ended tasks compared to structured tasks.
“The theory predicts that when presented with potentially rewarding new information or experiences, individuals with ADHD would demonstrate stronger exploratory responses compared to those without ADHD. This can explain why individuals with ADHD can experience both high distractibility in some contexts and hyperfocus in others, depending on the motivational salience of the stimuli.”
I was particularly impressed by your roadmap of falsifiability which is often conspicuously absent in some theoretical papers. What are the three main ways your theory is falsifiable?
Thank you! First, if research finds no difference in curiosity levels between ADHD and non-ADHD individuals. Second, if studies demonstrate that curiosity is not related to distractibility and impulsivity in ADHD. Third, if research shows that high trait curiosity is equally adaptive or maladaptive regardless of the unpredictability and information richness of a given environment.
Are there any limitations that your theory cannot currently address?
The theory is based on limited research, as we only have emerging evidence about the relationship between curiosity, distractibility, and impulsivity, and translating findings from animal studies to humans has inherent limitations, particularly regarding the intersection of curiosity and ADHD in non-human primates. It also doesn’t fully address potential differences in curiosity across different ADHD subtypes, i.e., predominantly inattentive, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive, and combined presentations. Overall, I’m hoping for this theory to be a starting point for more targeted research on curiosity in ADHD and its manifestation across different environmental contexts. Like all scientific theories, this one is meant to evolve and be refined as new evidence emerges and our understanding of the relationship between curiosity and ADHD deepens through further research.
Which practical interventions does your theory allow for with patients/students?
By understanding ADHD through an evolutionary lens, clinicians and educators can work with patients and students to identify environments and activities that better match their natural tendencies, while developing strategies to manage challenges in more structured settings. Given that high trait curiosity might be a strength in ADHD, interventions could focus on harnessing this natural tendency rather than trying to suppress it.
For instance, AI-assisted tools have shown promise in providing personalized learning experiences for individuals with ADHD, allowing them to engage with material in ways that capitalize on their natural curiosity. Game-based learning has also demonstrated positive effects on engagement and interest, particularly in subjects like mathematics. The Montessori classroom model, which is designed to foster curiosity, has shown promising results—students with ADHD in Montessori settings exhibit more actively engaged on-task behaviors compared to traditional classroom settings. Lastly, outdoor socially-oriented activities have been associated with higher levels of curiosity.
These various approaches suggest that by working with, rather than against, natural tendencies in ADHD, we might achieve better outcomes for individuals with the condition.
“…students with ADHD in Montessori settings exhibit more actively engaged on-task behaviors compared to traditional classroom settings.”
Finally, what are the three main key points that you would like to get across to people reading your paper (or those who do not have the time to read it!)
1. Hypercuriosity in ADHD likely served adaptive functions in ancestral environments by promoting exploration, resource discovery, and vigilance.
2. Hypercuriosity has become mismatched in modern environments, where information abundance and structured demands can transform an adaptive trait into what we now label as distractibility and impulsivity.
3. Understanding ADHD through this evolutionary lens suggests potential strengths-based approaches to intervention, focusing on creating environments and opportunities that better match natural tendencies rather than solely trying to suppress them.
I was wondering if you had any concluding thoughts/remarks, what’s in store for you going forward and how interested readers may follow you and your work?
I’m currently applying for funding for a postdoctoral position at the ADHD Research Lab to further explore the relationship between curiosity and ADHD. I’m particularly excited about taking a neurodiversity-informed, strength-based perspective, rather than focusing solely on deficits, as I believe this approach can help us better understand ADHD and potentially inform more effective interventions. I believe understanding ADHD through an evolutionary lens could lead to more nuanced and effective approaches to support, moving beyond purely deficit-based models toward ones that recognize and harness inherent strengths. The best way to follow my work is on X/Twitter.
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Very interesting... The attempt to reframe ADHD as a strength always seemed like cope to me, and my understanding of the research was that it was clear that it involved severe deficits in multiple life domains.
(For my MA thesis, I did a review on the history of scientific controversy around ADD/WO vs ADHD, and the status of SCT (sluggish cognitive tempo) as a potential symptom cluster or possibly a distinct disorder--last I heard, Barkeley believes the research suggests the latter...SCT is a separate, although not yet officially recognized disorder, albeit one that is comorbid with ADHD about 50% of the time, much like depression and anxiety are distinct but overlapping and very frequently co-occuring.))
The fact that you can have a genuine disability and also incidentally have strengths that can help you to compensate for it always made sense to me.
But this theory has the advantage of being falsifiable, and it rings true with my experience. Openness is my most extreme Big 5 score, and I've always been extremely curious. And it has been my "superpower"; I never did assigned readings but read difficult academic material for fun instead. And I finally put my ability to educate myself to use by becoming a self-taught programmer, by basically locking myself in a room for a year, going from having no career to speak of to being a senior dev in a few years.
And I've always felt...kind of out of time or something. Even though I've always been a bit of a loner, I do well in groups. The atomization of modern society always just felt wrong to me; I just felt in my bones that that's not how humans were meant to live. I can be very self-directed, but actually do well in hierarchy. I actually loved military boot camp. And I crave stimulation and challenge. I've always been into video games, but apparently unlike most, I actually want to (and do) do those kinds of things in real life: run, jump, climb, swim, parkour, explore, martial arts, archery... I've taken up ice plunges. I just need that kind of intensity to feel alive. (See the book, "What Doesn't Kill Us".) Modernity is killing us with comfort, and it just astounds me that so many people seem to be okay with that.
Very interesting article, and it makes sense that it is a human trait that was useful in previous types of societies.
I am reminded of Einstein's comments about holding on the curiosity of a child. At some stage it would be interesting to consider what a positive education might do for ADHD people to hone their abilities and curiosity rather than suppress them. Perhaps something more intellectually adventurous, like Steiner schools, may develop their curiosity and problem solving skills?