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"Paying Attention." Scientific American. "Increased Medication Use in ADD: Regressive or Appropriate?" JAMA "The Ritalin Controversy: What's Made This Drug's Opponents Hyperactive?" JAMA The Leading Edge Research Homepage newsgroup: alt.support.attn-deficit Wired Magazine, "Interrupt Driven" Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Adults You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid Or Crazy?! Success with Attention Deficit Disorder and Hyperactivity Parents of Children With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder |
Denckla, Martha B. "Biological Correlates of Learning and Attention: What Is Relevant to Learning Disability and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?" Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 2 ser. 17 (1996): 114-119. The Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, which is also geared towards the medical/health industry, can be found in university libraries. At the university level, the journal is highly confined to only medical libraries. This scarcity definitely makes the journal almost inaccessible to the general public. Even if the journal was more accessible, the jargon and medical terminology would probably prevent majority of the public from reading it, limiting the readers to mostly medical doctors and researchers. The article of interest, "Biological Correlates of Learning and Attention: What Is Relevant to Learning Disability and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ?," written by a prominent medical doctor on the faculty at John Hopkins in the Departments of Neurology, Pediatrics, and Psychiatry, is different from the other articles in the sense that it mentions only generalized groups. She first introduces the central generalized groups: patients who carry clinical diagnoses of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disability (LD), or both. She then references one of the few specialized groups , Shaywitz et al., to present the confusion with the term attention in the name of ADHD. Throughout the article, she references the general groups - clinicians , educators, neuropsychologists, and cognitive scientists to support what I will label "minor" details here and there. Like majority of the articles on ADHD, parents constitute the underlying group although they definitely do not constitute the readers in this case. The article first purposes the objectives to be met by the study. The objectives can be summarized into three questions: (1) what variety of a ttention is impaired in children who meet criteria for the diagnosis of ADHD?, (2) do children with ADHD have difficulty learning?, and (3) what do learning disability and ADHD have in common at the cognitive level? The author then defines important terminology, such ADHD, learning disabilities, intention, working memory, and executive function, to prevent confusion from arising since these terms are commonly defined differently by different groups: researchers, clinicians, and regular people. This article proceeds in responding to originally proposed question. The author summarizes the answer to the fist question in such a manner: "what an attention deficit is primarily an intention deficit, with prominent developmental failures of inhibition" (Denckla, p117). For the second question, the following was found: children with ADHD, but with-out learning disabilities, tend to be good incidental learners, but poor academic learners. Finally, it was found that children with ADHD may experience problems similar to those with LD, although different brain may underlie what appears to be dysfunctional. Also, as ADHD children grow older, they lose their hyperactivity and impulsivity which may cause them to appear more or less like LD children. I think that this article is definitely written for people with prior knowledge and/or research in the area of ADHD. It was quite difficult for me to grasp all of the points being made by the authors without reading it at least a good five times. Even then, I think that some of points still went missed. I think it does a good of presenting the findings to the intended readers - the medical doctors and researchers who have much prior knowledge of ADHD. In other words, the article serves it function as a informative publication for the knowing. I am skeptical to even voice my opinion since I know that I did not gather the whole point of the article. I would have to voice my opinion only after gaining more information that would bring me to the level of the article. Reviewer: Lekisha Jackson |
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