What-If:

>Far more than a "just say no" skill, self-control also gives us the gift of "what-if," an inner life that offers us the chance to mentally test out the future without suffering "real world consequences for one's mistakes," notes attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) researcher Russell Barkley. In other words, self-control is the essence of looking-literally and cognitively-before you leap.<

Distracted, Maggie Jackson

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>The renowned ADHD researcher Russell Barkley argues that the capacity for executive function and self-control may have evolved in humans from two crucial social needs-exchanging goods and services with those outside the family group and learning through imitation. Such achievements essentially involve forms of waiting and remembering, in other words, the "mental spreadsheet" skills governed by the executive attention network and lacking to varying degrees in people with attention deficit disorders. In periods of alternating plenty and famine, it would behoove lucky hunters or farmers to share extra supplies in exchange for later shares in another's bounty. Similarly, our ability to sustain the memory of a skill, such as toolmaking, over time and distance and then replicate the behavior for one's own purposes, is a crucial and uniquely human capacity. Those with ADHD, however, suffer from forgetfulness and impulsivity, traits that impair their ability to shape the course of their lives. "The child with ADHD will be more under the control of external events than of mental representations about time and the future, under the influence of others rather than acting to control the self, pursuing immediate gratification over deferred gratification and under the influence of the temporal now more than of the probable social futures that lie ahead," asserts Barkley, concluding that ADHD is a disorder of "attention to the future and what one needs to do to prepare for its arrival." It is, he says, a "disorder of time."<