This study compared two groups of undergraduate students at the University of Memphis. One group had ADHD and one did not, with 26 people in each group. The two groups were similar in age and college test scores. Everyone did two creative tasks.
In the first task, people invented an alien fruit. Judges rated the fruit made by students with ADHD as more original than the fruit made by the other students (a moderate difference, d=0.645). Their fruit also had more features that could not exist on Earth (a large difference, d=1.22). The number of normal, Earth-like features was about the same in both groups.
In the second task, people made up product labels. The study gave example labels first. Students with ADHD copied fewer of the example endings than the other students did (d=0.760). How detailed the labels were did not differ between the groups.
The authors say students with ADHD seemed less tied to familiar or recently seen ideas when creating.
The authors call the results preliminary. The sample was small, with 26 per group, below the 28 per group their power check suggested. The group with ADHD was also fairly healthy and high functioning, so the findings may not apply to adults with more severe or mixed conditions.
Source: White H. Thinking “Outside the Box”: Unconstrained Creative Generation in Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The Journal of Creative Behavior (2018). doi:10.1002/jocb.382