ABSTRACT
Sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) is a term used to describe a syndrome of excessive daydreaming, sluggishness, drowsiness, and forgetfulness, hypothesized to accompany some cases of the inattentive type of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).The termSCTwas introduced byLahey et al. (1). Items describing “daydreams” and “seems sluggish or drowsy” were included in rating scales, e.g., Revised Behavior Problem Checklist (2) and Child Behavior Checklist (3), which were widely used in research in the 1980s. These symptoms were observed to be elevated in children with DSM-III attention deficit disorder without hyperactivity (ADD-WO) (4-6). These symptoms were present in data sets because of their inclusion in behavior rating scales used by these researchers. In those years, no concerted efforts were made toward gathering a more complete set of descriptors, or in more fully delineating SCT beyond those two items. The shift away from recognition of an inattentive type of ADHD inDSM-III-R hindered progress in studying the construct. A renaissance of interest in SCT began around the time of DSM-IVs introduction and has slowly continued, although progress continues to be limited by the lack of a psychometrically sound and generally accepted measure of SCT.
