Time as an invisible disability: Salience and temporal sequencing of time-related events in boys with and without ADHD

As children mature they are increasingly expected to adhere to social demands and to be aware of time, namely to be on time for activities, to be prepared in time for activities and to remain focussed over a period of time.

By adulthood, time management makes a major contribution to social and occupational effectiveness. Consequently, understanding time, how it is sensed and how it is used in self-regulation is important in the understanding of ADHD.

This study examined the subjective awareness of the concept of time and temporal sequencing of events in children with and without ADHD.

In this regard, highly motivating and innovative techniques were used to determine whether retrospective and prospective sense of time is impaired in children with the disorder.

Salience and temporal sequencing of time related actions in boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Twenty-four 8 to 12 year-old boys with ADHD and 24 non-ADHD boys matched on age and IQ viewed an edited, non-dialogue portion of the humorous television program, Mr. Bean, to examine performance on a task requiring attention to and recall of temporal information.

Participants were required to retell the story as closely as possible, complete a picture-prompted sequencing task taken from the story, and identify time saving actions taken by the central character in the story.

Measures were also obtained of the number of prospective, retrospective, or present time-related references made and whether participants correctly identified the overarching time theme of the story. Significant group differences were evident in the total number of actions recalled and the number of events recalled in sequence in favour of the comparison boys.

When poorer memory performance in boys with ADHD was controlled, however, there was no significant main effect of diagnostic group.

A logistic regression analysis indicated significantly more boys in the comparison group correctly identified the overarching time theme of the story.

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Objectivity as an executive function of ADHD Boys and their mothers

In a recent theoretical model of ADHD it is proposed that a core deficit in response inhibition affects, among other things, an individual's objectivity in their reaction to events.

In the context of this, the ability of boys diagnosed with ADHD objectively to differentiate their own behaviour from that of a caricatured portrayal of ADHD by Bart Simpson was examined in this study.

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Objectivity as an executive function of attention deficit disordered boys and their mothers.

Four segments, each lasting 10-15 seconds, depicting ADHD related behaviours were isolated from a television episode of The Simpsons and shown in random order to 39 boys diagnosed with ADHD, their mothers, and two paediatricians.

After watching each segment, the boys were asked to show how similar they believed their behaviours were to those exhibited by Bart Simpson by simultaneously placing two figures (one a replica of Bart and another representing themselves) on a chequer board.

Mothers were subsequently administered the same procedure to indicate how they viewed their sons' behaviour in relation to Bart's.

The distance measured between the two figures was representative of their levels of objectivity compared to a benchmark level set by the two paediatricians using the same chequer board procedure.

While the results overall indicate that boys with ADHD and their mothers are able to make distinctions between caricatured and typical ADHD behaviours, the results are mediated by both ADHD subtype and the specific ADHD behaviour portrayed in the video segment.

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Developmental stress, hemispheric integration and uninhibited reflexes in children with ADHD

In this research, a series of studies examined Dennison's theory of dominance profiling in three groups of young boys, namely those diagnosed with ADHD (ADHD Group), those with non-specific co-ordination, learning, emotional and behavioural problems (CLEB Group) and those with no known problems (Able Group).

The first study, investigated the boys exposure to stress over four developmental stages.

The second study examined the boys’ hemispheric preferences and dominance patterns.

The third study assessed the boys’ reflexive responses and the last study measured the boys’ academic abilities in math, reading and spelling.

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Primitive reflexes and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Developmental origins of classroom dysfunction

The present research studied the symptomatologic overlap of ADHD behaviours and retention of four primitive reflexes (Moro, Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex [TLR], Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex [ATNR], Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex [STNR]) in 109 boys aged 7-10 years. Of these, 54 were diagnosed with ADHD, 34 manifested sub-syndromal coordination, learning, emotional and/or behavioural symptoms of ADHD, and 21 had no (or near to no) symptoms of ADHD.

Measures of ADHD symptomatology and of the boys’ academic performance were also obtained using the Conners’ rating scale and the WRAT-3, respectively.

Results indicated that, in general, boys diagnosed with ADHD had significantly higher levels of reflex retention than non-diagnosed boys.

Results also indicated both direct and indirect relationships between retention of the Moro, ATNR, STNR and TLR reflexes with ADHD symptomatology and mathematics achievement.

The pattern of relationships between these variables was also consistent with the notion of the Moro acting as a gateway for the inhibition of the other three reflexes.

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