In an age of constant connectivity and endless choices about how to delegate our attention, cognitive control involves our capacity to maintain focus long enough to solves problems without succumbing to our impulses or distractions. Developmentally, cognitive control steadily increases between the ages of 4-12 years while impulsivity peaks around adolescence. By our early 20’s, most individuals have fully developed their executive functioning and capacity for cognitive control. Yet for individuals with ADHD, distractibility, impulsivity, and inattentiveness may contribute to significant lapses in cognitive control resulting in difficulties planning and following through with goal-oriented behaviors.
A recent article in the New York Times highlighted similar prevalence rates between American and Finnish adolescents with ADHD. The importance of this finding is that most adolescents in the United States are treated with psychotropic medication, whereas adolescents in Finland are not. Recently, researchers and mental health professionals have been utilizing mindfulness as a means to teach people how to increase their metacognitive capacity by monitoring their thoughts and feelings in a nonjudgmental manner. According to neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, mindfulness is a cognitive control exercise that enhances our ability to self-regulate internal distractions. Preliminary studies suggest that adults with ADD benefit from mindfulness training combined with cognitive therapy, and that improvements in mental performance via mindfulness interventions are comparable to those achieved by taking medications alone. While researchers agree that mindfulness training bolsters the brain’s capacity to sustain attention, it is still too early to exclusively target ADHD with mindfulness practice alone. Nevertheless, preliminary results are promising, and mindfulness-based interventions may offer individuals struggling with attention deficits an avenue to cope with distractibility and disinhibition.