Responses to interpersonal and physically provoking situations: The utility and application of an observation schedule for school-aged students with and without Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

This research describes the development and pilot testing of a new instrument, the Responses to Interpersonal and Physically Provoking Situations Schedule (RIPPS), designed to measure the reactivity of students with and without ADHD in the naturalistic setting of the classroom.

For this study, 29 pre-service teachers from one university graduate school of education conducted structured observations on two students each, one clinically diagnosed student with ADHD and the other with no diagnosed disorder, resulting in 58 Year 8-11 students (aged 13-17 years) participating in the study.

Each student pair was observed for 40 minutes, with alternating observational blocks of two minutes per student. Observational data in the form of responses to emotionally provoking events and the triggers to the responses were clustered together and systematically coded, resulting in four distinct categories for responses and four distinct categories for triggers.

Students with ADHD exhibited significantly more solitary off-task behaviours, interactional off-task behaviours, and challenging behaviours than their non-ADHD peers. There were no differences between the students in the perceived severity of responses.

For triggers, failure to begin assigned tasks and peer-initiated triggers were the most common, with nearly half of the solitary off-task behaviours being attributed to environmental distractions and over a quarter attributed to teacher behaviours.

While the RIPPS is a relatively new instrument, important data has been gathered in ecologically valid contexts and provides the framework for further development of an instrument of this nature.

Responding to interpersonal and physically provoking situations in classrooms: Emotional intensity in children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

This present research investigated the emotional functioning of children with and without ADHD in order to examine relationships between emotional intensity and classroom-based responses to physically and interpersonally provoking situations.

Seventy children (35 with ADHD and 35 without ADHD) in Years 3-8 participated and were matched on age, gender, grade, and school class.

Each child was observed individually in the classroom over two 20 minute periods. The Responses to Interpersonal and Physically Provoking Situations Observation Schedule was used to record the frequency and severity of responses and the triggers for these during the observational periods. Children later rated their emotional intensity in response to hypothetical scenarios on the Emotional Intensity Scale for Children.

Results revealed children with ADHD displayed significantly more frequent and severe challenging and solitary off-task behaviours, and significantly more frequent vocalisations and severe interactional off-task behaviours.

For triggers, environmental and teacher-initiated distractions were significantly more frequently observed in children with ADHD. There were no differences in ratings of emotional intensity between children with and without ADHD, although a number of significant and meaningful correlations were observed between positive emotional intensity scores and responses and triggers.

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