This one you probably didn’t think about, the psychological sense of time that comes out of this executive function, your ability to sense the passage of time. Why do we have this? To anticipate and get ready for the future. Without this system, by the way, there would be no past tense or any future tense in language, because what are you referring to? When you use past and future tense you are referring to images of the past and anticipation of the future.
So, here’s a prediction, never attempted by any theory of AD/HD. AD/HD delays all of this. Well does it? Do people with AD/HD have problems with sense of time? You’re damn right they do. Do people with AD/HD have trouble anticipating the future? You bet. They live in the now. Like Dennis the Menace, isn’t it always now? Don’t talk to me about tomorrow. Don’t talk to me about next week. Doesn’t matter. Now, now, now.
Here’s an interesting prediction: I predict that if you study young preschool AD/HD children, they will not develop past and future tense in language as early as other children. If my theory is wrong, you won’t find any differences, and that part of the theory is dead. But I will bet you it’s true. I’ve actually already tested it through interviews with parents about AD/HD children. They do not refer to time, the past and future in language as much as other children do. Other children start talking about tomorrow, next week, next month much earlier than AD/HD kids do. AD/HD adults have a terrible sense of time. We have now finished our fifth study of sense of time. AD/HD destroys it, right down to intervals as short as 10 seconds. Time escapes them.
Now, let’s juxtapose that finding with this finding. Modern human culture worships time. The best-selling books in nonfiction section of bookstores are time management books, and you have a disorder that destroys the sense of time. AD/HD is the consummate disorder of time management. We start out living in the now as preschoolers. As we get older, this window opens. Looking back, to look ahead, and it gets wider and wider and wider, until in our early 30s this window is 8-12 weeks out. Most of the decisions you and I are making are for events that lie about 8-12 weeks out. We can anticipate further out, but that’s our average fore-period for decision-making. AD/HD slams that window shut. AD/HD makes you live in the now. What does that mean? It means you will not get ready for the future until it’s here.
So, let me give you another name for AD/HD: time blindness. AD/HD creates a nearsightedness to the future, a temporal myopia, so that the individual is always waiting until the event is here, imminent, before they do anything to get ready. That is a fascinating insight into this disorder, that people with AD/HD have a temporal neglect syndrome. They cannot anticipate events that lie ahead and use it to guide their behavior, and it doesn’t matter how much you talk about the future. They will not get ready for an event until it crosses their time horizon, and their time horizon is right here, smack in front of them. Now you know why everything is left to the last minute all the time, always late, never ready, never prepared, never has materials, right? Do you see how devastating AD/HD in a modern culture would be?