> Anyone who is not neurotypical, plans to take more than one dose per lifetime, or is working longer than 32 minutes may want to question if this study applies to them
I suppose it's a fair counterpoint to folks who take these drugs occasionally in pursuit of gains. Granted, their tasks take longer than thirty-two minutes--that's why they're popping Adderrall.
Occasional might also be different from one-off. If you'd one-off anything your brain might be very much busy with thinking about: What's happening next? Am I feeling the effects now? Is this it?
It might end up you're distracted more than anything because it's a new feeling.
Say you never drank alcohol in your life. Somebody gives you a beer. A beer doesn't have that strong an effect, but if you don't know what's coming your mind still might be very busy figuring out what's happening. And while you expect some drop in intellectual ability from alcohol, an experienced occasional user will probably not have as severe a drop from one beer as the person that never tried any.
The occasional user will know the experience after a while, but not have a tolerance. That's who's interesting to study.
They were given the meds and then sat for 90 minutes. Someone without a tolerance taking 15mg of dextroamphetamine will not be wondering if they're feeling the effects.
GP isn't talking about "wondering if", but rather being distracted by thoughts like "WTF is going on?", "wooow!", "WOOOWOWOWOW!", "is it supposed to be like this?", "oh look at me I NAILED this task", "I think I have been hungry for the past 3 hours but I don't really care, WOW this is nice", etc. You get used to it in a day or two, and most of the "WOW factor" disappears just as fast - point being, one's very first day or two of taking such drugs aren't good as a benchmark.
BTW. with the beer example, it's been measured that part of intoxication effect comes from expectations. As in, you give people non-alcoholic drinks while telling them they're regular ones, and they'll show the usual signs of alcohol influence - worse coordination, stuttering speech, etc. - and snap out of it once told they've been drinking placebo. Reverse also seems true, i.e. early effects are weaker when people think they're drinking placebo while getting the real deal.
(And, N=1, personally I've observed I can "fix" the effect of a beer or two on movement and speech if I consciously remind myself that there's an expectations component to intoxication effect. Of course this works only up to a certain BAC level :).)
I suppose it's a fair counterpoint to folks who take these drugs occasionally in pursuit of gains. Granted, their tasks take longer than thirty-two minutes--that's why they're popping Adderrall.