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Perception and Culture

December 29, 2011

By Umesh Jain

I am sure many of you are working through the exhilaration of post-Christmas and Hanukah -Boxing Day madness and getting ready for New Year’s Eve parties (Hint: avoid Bill’s!). This is a time of reflection. You see it everywhere. TV shows, magazines and newspapers summarizing what happened in 2011. I am sure many of you have felt, “Where did this year go so fast?” I know I did. So, let’s talk about Time Perception with a twist.

Having spent time at conferences and with family in Doha, Qatar last week and this week in Nassau in the Bahamas; two quite different cultures, one thing is very obvious… people move very slowly. Time seems to not matter. Jamaicans own this concept but it is really quite endemic everywhere. You initially notice it in the service sector like taxi drivers or waiters but then you notice it in things like people’s movements and their speech. The adaptation, coming from a fast paced world like North America to a time jelly place like these, is really noticeable. And when one slows down, the days seem to drag. It is the pace of life. How does anyone get anything done?

Now when one recognizes that the prevalence of ADHD in both of these places is higher than in North America, then one wonders, WHY? In Doha, it is estimated to be around 11% while in the Caribbean, it is closer to 15% (although I think it is higher). Time perception is a burgeoning area of research and it is not that old. Initial reviews by Anna Smith et. al. in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (2002) in an article called, Evidence for a Pure Time Perception Deficit in ADHD Children identified what we already knew, ADHD people can’t judge time very well. But if the world is slower in pace, why might the prevalence rate be higher? It could be just plain inbreeding which magnifies the rates but it could also be the culture.

If the world goes too slow, people’s ADHD might be more obvious. If the world speeds up, the rates might go down because things have to be done faster and deadlines become more relevant. It could also be that the quirks of ADHD might be more accepting in these cultures also as there is still an emphasis on extended family which tends to be more tolerant and less of an emphasis on treatment (medical or adaptive) of these quirks.

If you are travelling abroad to a place where time moves relatively slowly or you currently live in these places, I could see how people with ADHD might feel uncomfortable. Maybe people have suggestions for these miserable ADDer folks trapped in a cultural time mud?

PS. Escape is not an option.

4 Responses to “Perception and Culture”

  1. jegoyer says:
    February 10, 2012

    I like being an ADDer in a slow paced environment…I am a superstar/superhero in this type of situation.
    Able to move at the speed of light, multi-task like I had 8 arms and leap through enormous interesting projects like there’s no tomorrow. Which, in my case, there is no concept of tomorrow, so I must get that project done right now before I run out of steam/interest, whichever comes first.
    People in a slower environment appreciate the abilities of an ADDer. They don’t sweat the little stuff either.
    Like always being late. Lack of focus. Talk too fast. Move too much. You’re seemingly endless ability to be always busy.
    The trade off for them is well worth it.

  2. Seorsa says:
    January 5, 2012

    I am new to the ADHD world, and already have my theories of how something like a small island could foster higher ADHD rates. But it is definitely not fact based, so I mainly want to reposed to Gary: I have almost 8,000 emails in my inbox, and last month I deleted about 1,000 old emails. I also have about 75 folders that I use as a system for keeping important topics to group together. I get about 2,000 work emails a month, so obviously a number consistently between 7 and 8 thousand shows some sort of system. Colleagues all over the State call me and ask, “Do you remember when so and so sent out information about…?” And usually within a few minutes, 20 tops, they have everything they need in their in box. My manager, who has worked for me for almost 8 years now, and as a colleague the 5 years before that, practically has a heart attack when I am off and she needs to find something in my email. I lost my mind at christmas when her 5 folder, 20 email inbox seemed like an insurmountable problem to me. Then I remembered that she had copied me on the info I needed, and found it in a second. I sometimes dream of a zen style in box, office, and even home. No paper, no stacks of unread, and partially read books, magazines, and projects scattered. A world where the last 7 years has not seem me master: The Myers Briggs, the QOLI assessment, anger management facilitation, bicycle repair, maintenance and rebuilding (I have rebuilt 8 bikes, and have 5 bikes and two frames in my garage), became and EMT, and most recently a American Heart Association Basic Life Support instructor, a licensed ham radio operator, certified in Mental Health First aid (actually lead me to realize i needed help with my adhd), and became a Disaster Healthcare Volunteer, and a State Disaster volunteer worker. Oh, yeah, and a volunteer Mountain Bike Patroller…. So, no zen.

  3. zsazsa says:
    January 4, 2012

    I’m a Canadian married to a guy born and bred in a slew of the southern US states. In other words, he never learned to speed talk like his ADHD wife. He could only drag out everything he wanted to say with his protracted manner of speech called a ‘drawl’.

    Egads!! What’s this guy’s problem? You have no idea how many times I’ve internally squiggled and wiggled just waiting for him to say something. Then again, you’ve no idea how many times I’ve not managed to hold my thoughts in and I’ve blurted out, “Just say it!! Just say it!! Don’t take all day to say a few words!”

    I suggested to him that maybe Canadians developed a faster rate of speech so that they didn’t freeze to death outside while just shooting the breeze with a friend on a frosty January day- something that doesn’t usually happen deep in the heart of Texas, or any of the other ultra warm states where he grew up.

    He does get frustrated when I ‘implode/explode’ while waiting for his words to come out but he has a very good understanding of my foibles that are related to my ADHD. He is one good man!

    BTW, we both have come to understand that escape is not an option to my ADHD. We both try to grin and bear it.

  4. Gary says:
    December 30, 2011

    This brings to light a contradiction I live with:

    On one hand I’ve often wished I could somehow slow the pace of life. It seems I’m always behind, and if life moved slower I might be able to grab onto and make sense of all the stuff – those myriad package of information- that clutter my mind on any given day. Instead they fly, lost in the noise of everything else competing for my attention with barely a notice. If I had time to properly sort them, understand where they fit -at least where normies say they fit- I could file them into the appropriate pigeonhole for later. This is my OCD self
    On the other hand, if I’m in a situation where I have the opportunity for analysis and reflection- time to properly hold and “grok (nod to Robert Heinlein)” what’s in front of me without distraction, I become bored…always a bad sign. I start considering all the other ways this “thing” in front of me could be categorized, connected to other “things”, put together with…? applied to…? Relationships and categories become fluid depending on the connectivity in a given situation.

    True story: I have over 800 emails in my inbox at work. People see this and ask in amazement (incredulity…?) why I don’t file them in folders, by category, for easy retrieval? I tell them that I tried that, but found myself either constantly rearranging folders and categories, or placing messages I thought were relevant to category “C” last week into category “M” today because the relation of the message to M was greater than C, at least today.
    By the way, I’ve concluded there are 2 kinds of people in the world: folder people and tag people. I’m a tagger.
    Uhmm…what was this novella in response to?

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