Lecture 10 - Flashcards
What % of school age children have been diagnosed with ADHD in the US
3-5
ADHD is due to a combination of what factors?
genetics, dopamine imbalance, insufficiency of neurotransmitters
American Psychiatric Association Delineates 3 types of ADHD:
- Primarily inattentive (20-30%)
- Primarily hyperactive (less that 15%)
- Combination inattentive/hyperactive (50-75%)
Kaderavek 2011
- 59% of children with specific language impairment are also diagnosed with ADHD
- Children with SLI with significant levels of receptive language impairments are most likely to be impulsive, distractible, and overactive
Blakemore-Brown
• Research in the US and Europe has shown that children with autism spectrum disorder as well as ADHD show overlapping characteristics
- parents complained that outwardly normal children, mainly boys, seems to “have a connection missing.”
- these boys were impulsive, didn’t listen to rules, were clumsy, and could not control temper outbursts
- they lost track of time and the parents had to breathe down their necks for every little task and deadline
• In both Europe and US, professionals are working to disentangle the diagnoses as well as find their commonalities
Tannock & Martinussen
- Basal ganglia regions of the cerebellum are significantly smaller in children with ADHD
- Non-genetic factors: premature birth, maternal use of drugs and alcohol during pregnancy, exposure to high levels of lead in early childhood
Research about TV
- watching TV before 2 years of age is correlated with attention problems later on (even shows that are intended for intelligence)
- need more parent interaction; movies aren’t interactive or stimulating
- Children 3-5 years should only watch educational, nonviolent programs (such as dora)
- School is boring and slow for children who are exposed to too much TV
- TV topics are presented briefly on screen with lots of visual stimuli, varied settings, loud noises, lots of movement, and flashes of color
University of Michigan Health System, 2012
“Television and Children”
STATS
2-5 yo spend 32 hours per week watching TV
6-11 yo watch 28 hours per week
By 18, the average american child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV
What is Executive Functioning? (EF)
Our capacity to achieve goals
Morris, 2011; Westby, 2011 - Computer use and EF
- Computer use has become more widespread and has many benefits, but there can also be drawbacks which affect EF skills
- General browsing encourages the use of multitasking and continuous partial attention, which can cause irritability and impair cognitive skills.
What can playing computer games do to a child?
• Impair the development of the frontal lobe, causing anti social behavior
The problem with screens (tv/vg)
- Children become wired for high speed stimulation
- Every hour of TV/Video Game use per day increases a child’s risk of developing attention problems
- difficult for a student to think, plan, and reflect when s/he has been exposed to a great deal of screen time in her childhood
- we need to encourage students and parents to unplug and get moving
Symptoms of ADHD
- Not diagnosed by standardized tests - “diagnosis is based on a careful assessment of the behavioral symptoms” (Tannock & Martinussen)
- difficulties coping with everyday life
Specific behaviors may include:
- Difficulty remaining seated
- poor follow through on tasks
- excessive motor activity - fidgeting, squirming
- Short attention span
- distractibility
- inability to delay gratification
- shifting rapidly from one activity to another
- Loses things; “space cadet”
Possible speech-language characteristics
- poor auditory memory
- Continually saying “what” and “huh”
- false starts, verbal mazes
- poor story-telling ability (disorganized)
- poor pragmatics - interrupting, non-sequiters (something totally off topic)
