Stimulant medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) improve memory of emotional stimuli in
1Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, United States.
Objective:
Stimulant medications do not improve the academic achievement of ADHD diagnosed undergraduates. One reason may be that stimulant-induced sympathetic arousal might impair memory.
Participants And Methods:
To test this hypothesis, we conducted a study between September 2011 and March 2012, to compare medicated (n=12) and non-medicated (n=11) ADHD diagnosed undergraduates, with non-ADHD students (n=12). All participants were presented with an audiovisual narrative that included an emotional segment, and answered questions about the story one week later.
Results:
All groups remembered the emotional segment significantly better than the neutral segments. Non-medicated ADHD students recalled less of both segments than the medicated ADHD or non-ADHD groups, which did not differ from each other.
Conclusion:
Stimulants improved memory in ADHD students, and did not impair the relative retention of emotional, as opposed to neutral information. Stimulant-induced arousal cannot explain the academic deficit of ADHD undergraduates.
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