ADHD Diagnosis
ADHD DiagnosisAttention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) is much more prevalent in today’s society
compared to previous generations. More and more people are being diagnosed at an alarming
rate. To our surprise, I learned this disorder does not only affect children. There are many adults
who suffer from it also. ADHD characteristics are neuro-biologically based, and they often
change as the individual gets older. One does not out-grow ADHD even though the behaviors, or
symptoms may not be exhibited in the same manner or with the same intensity. After learning
this fact, I thought it would be very interesting to see how this disorder affects both children and
college students. Therefore, I choose one journal article which relates ADHD to children, and the
other which deals with the effects of ADHD on college students.
The first journal article I researched, “An Intervention Approach for Children with
Teacher and Parent Identified Attentional Difficulties,” explained that inattention, impulsivity,
distractibility, and restlessness are all signs of a child with an attention-deficit hyperactivity
disorder. “There are three subtypes of ADHD which have been defined by the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as: predominantly inattentive, predominately hyperactive
impulsive, and combined” (Semrud-Clekeman, Nielsen, Clinton, Sylvester, Parle, and Connor,
1999). Usually children who exhibit these subtypes have difficulty completing assignments,
displaying high qualities of work, and maintaining good behaviors. Children with the
hyperactivity-impulsivity subtype do not display significant attentional problems, though they are
identified as young as pre-schoolers. However, symptoms of inattention don’t typically emerge
until the later ages, which must be why the predominately inattentive and combined subtypes of
ADHD have been found in older school-age children.
These children who have been identified as having ADHD, show an inability to
use effective problem solving over a period of time. When researchers looked at their brain
structures, they found that the frontal-striatal regions are involved with the child’s ability to
inhibit, focus, and shift attention.
Researchers have formed interventions involving the behavioral or cognitive
management of children with ADHD. Attention-training strategies, classroom-based
contingency systems, home-school contingencies, and peer-mediated contingencies are examples
of these interventions. In an effort to measure students with ADHD, in addition to medication
and intervention strategies, researchers conducted two types of tests.
The first test, the visual attention task, required the child to scan fourteen rows of
d’s, each d had one to three marks around it. The child was instructed to select the d’s with two
marks around them. The children were also told to move down to the next row every twenty
seconds. The score is calculated by subtracting the errors from the total amount correct. “It was
suggested that this task assesses the capacity for sustained attention as well as accurate visual
scanning and inhibition of rapid responses”(Semrud-Clekeman, Nielsen, Clinton, Sylvester,
Parle, and Connor, 1999, p. 585).
The second test, the auditory attention task, required the child to listen to random
letters and numbers. Afterwards, they were asked to remember how many letters or numbers they
heard. The child must keep in mind the letters and numbers they heard for each stimulus at the
same time. The test starts out with four stimuli and...
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