Thank you! Yes I did read it, but I skimmed the part I already read on the forum...

I think you are right about the multiplicity of natures and the complexity of consideration within a context. I took a class or two in "systematics" which is about how to organize (liveing things in my case.) I think your structure is very workable and useful.

From yet another angle, I think there are at least 6 independent axis of functional cause. And that analysis requires the segregaton of primary secondardy tertiary, etc. interactions and particpiations in the observable syndrom.

Thus, some kind of depression is the result, not the cause, of life experiences shaped by ADHD. Depression is NOT primary. though AFTER it is present it can certainly initiate trouble on its own!

They include: short term memory, fragility, disordered processing compared to other minds normal functions, etc., other ablites or disabilites interactions with self and environment or society, etc.


shall we start a list?

Yay! I understand something! I think.

An atypical brain in terms of functioning = atypical responses, perceptions of life, reasoning processes = characteristics that some see as deficits and characteristics that some see as assets, and an ability to think outside the box or lack of ability to think inside the box.

Right.

And some things are the results, not the cause, of ADHD.

Like having difficulty forming or maintaining friendships. If when an ADHD person stands up a date or a friend for the umteenth time, say, for lunch or a movie, etc. because they got engrossed in something else unexpected in the day and didn't snapp out of it, or scheduled something else at the exact same time, like a trip out of town, or minor surgery, then the social "dysfunction" is not a "primary causal" feature but the result of an inability to set internal timers and rely on the "bell" going off at a useful time!

Is that the way you see it, Tudorose, others?

I couldn't agree with you more Wheel.Thats exactly right on.ADHD is the consumate disorder of self-control and time management.In the process, relationships get hit hard and reports are done but turned in late.So this is indeed an artifact and not the cause.Well said.

Agreed that that is a consequence of ADD and it hits the relationships hard. When it is a appointment that you have initiated by your own choice and you fail to follow through with it then it is a situation of your own doing. It may well be that it is the ADD that has caused you to screw up on that situation but it is your own doing that you have failed to set the mechanism in place to make sure that you got to the appointment.

This is understandable.

Where I seem to run into many problems is in example when you are hired to do a particular job of which you can not only do but do very well, and then someone who is deemed to have control over you (your Boss) decided that you can do something else usually on top of what you are already doing (quite often something that you have no interest in doing) then when it gets screwed up or not done then you end up paying the price for it.

Even when you try to make it clear that it was not part of the verbal contract that you were hired under.

If I was hired to walk the dog ,traveling a distance of 10 miles that would take 4 hours to complete the task, and I figure out how to do the task by putting the dog on a treadmill with a bone tied in front of him of which he will get the bone after he completes the ten miles, which eliminates me having to walk the ten miles and gives me the 4 hours to sit back and relax.

If this works efficiently and the dog is happy what gives the boss the right to give me another task to do as the dog is happily doing his ten miles on the tread mill.

But because he is the boss he feels he has the right to capitalize on your unitive and get more work out of you for the same price and usually take the credit for your unitive.

These are the situations I find hard to deal with because even if you discuss the situation with the Boss in a politically assertive way he still wants to exercise his superiority over you.

This was a long way of saying that I prefer to work in a self employed capacity or under a contract of so much money for so much work done.

We as ADDers and our possible low self esteem find ourselves in situations like this too often and then our lack of social graces does not allow us to have the ability to stand our ground politically and socially and therefore our working relationships take a huge hit also.

I can appreciate that there is much work to do in the area of understanding the reasons for why ADD exists and what cause it, but I also feel very strongly that if there was less work put into trying to understand why we are the way we are

and more work put into teaching the kids when they are at a young and impressionable age about what emotions are and what the names of these emotions are that are spouted off by the books and professionals of our times then there might be a lot less pain suffered by people as they grow up and become ADDults.

The amount of money that is spent teaching kids to learn how to spell, write creative stories , going on ski trips, etc when they have possibly no interest in any of it.

If there were classes such as understand your inner emotions,
handling yourself in an assertive way, learning to co-operate in a wordily environment, etc

Find the source of the fire and put it out at the source instead of battling with rooms that got burnt down and damaged in fire after its too late.

I'm babbling and probably way off topic by now so I will end this post for now anyway

Doc Mctavish,
Thank you. I'd like to take it a step further though, and would appreciate your input.
In my observations the situation is like the difference between OR logic and AND logic.

OR logic is more "forgiving." normal people get results like or logic rates of success. If one element is TRUE in an n-step OR process, the whole process is true. Performance wise, less has to be true to get a TRUE for the whole when compared to:

AND logic. AND logic requires that every element of the statement be TRUE for the statement to be TRUE. Any single element that goes false taints the whole statement, and the whole is false.

OR logic is high redundancy, AND logic is NO redundancy.

As applied to people with ADHD, I combine the above pattern with the statistics involved in the roulette wheel. what are the odds of getting "black" on a spin of the wheel? If I have the total correct, there are 100 holes, 2 green, the rest split between red and black. The chances of getting black are 48 out of one hundred, just less than half. After the wheel spins and lands black 7 times in a row, what are the chances that the next spin will be black? Intuitively, because long runs of a color are relatively rare it seems that 8 in a row is less common that 7 in a row, so the odds must be less. but of course, the odds are the same, still 48 out of 100.

For the ADHD each step in a process is an opportunity to fail. Realisticly normal people will not "take" the opportunity as often as the ADHD by a significant margin.
1) fail to notice the assignment
2) fail to document, write down, schedule the assignment
3) fail to notice that it is not understood
4) fail to ask questions to clarifiy when do notice the assignment is not understood
5) fail to successfully ask the right question to resolve the misunderstanding
6) fail to schedule the work
7) fail to start the work
8) fail to notice the work hasn't started
9) fail to progress even though working
10) fail to notice failure to progress
11) failure to generate an appropriate countermeasure when failure to progress is noticed
12) failure to seek appropriate help
13) failure to state needs in the interogative instead of the declarative, thereby failing to ACTUALLY invite the help of others (intersects with social dysfunctions and communications issues, not in content, but in protocol and form!)
14) I relally don't want to do my masters right here. The list goes on and it DOES have a finite, though large number of elements, which vulnerablilites vary to some extent amongst specifc people or settings or tasks. Appropriate augmentation and substitution strategies must be put in place at EVERY step to insure conminserate reliability with the normal population.

each of these opportunities for failure act as an AND, and one failure and the assignment never reaches its destination. the ADHD significan'lty are prone to "giveup" or bail out" at these failures, over estimating the severity of the problem in the view of normals. (but that may not be a correct assessment, even it it would be for a normal. :) )

this is true of other people to, but there is one more complication for the ADHD.

Where as other people will spontaniously restart the process, or simply skip to another step, and functionally get caught up, the ADHD once derailed are much less likely to be able to restart anywhere, or anywhere useful, being derailed at multiple points, and not seeming to get much if any immunity to derailment just because they survived that part of the process before...( For the ADHD, "past performance does not predict future results."), much less where they stopped.

If they failed because they could not put their need in the form of the interogative (they "can't" ask appropriate questions) coming back to the step simply doesn't solve the problem of not being able to form a question. they are perfectly stopped until outside intervention substitutively bridges it for them.

If, in addition, they have 28 or 70 green spaces instead of 2, the odds of getting runs of success (all backs in a row enough to successfull get through a normatively long AND seive) become negligible. Rather than being able to independently complete 7 or 8 step processes without external supports, they may be doing well to function at the level of one, two or three step processes.

The ability to perform the functions in isolation is not the only functional requirement of real life. A requirement ADHD people, to the consternation of ALL, seem readily able to do. They must run the guantlet of multiple chained steps as well. And the parameters of that gauntlet, though invisible, are not equal to the normal population's parameters, as obviously demonstrated by direct obsevation.

Your thoughts?

Wow, That's a lot of stuff...lol.Very impressive.First let me say to Gary that I believe we are all responsible for what we say and do.Having said that, the underlying reasons then become very important. ADHD is a Reason and Not an Excuse.It is therefore important to make sure that the true ADHD person has some accomodations thru the ADA(American with Disabilities Act) and that the employer be well informed of the developmental disability that is ADHD.

Wheel,I don't pretend to understand the roulette wheel reference but thats impressive.BTW, please call me mct or mc. I like that best, as my friends call me that. As far as what you said about ADHD, Barkley agrees with you as do I. He explained it well as he is a board certified neuropsychologist, by saying that ADHD interferes with the one function of attention out of six that covers output instead of input and thats perserverance(staying on task).That has everything to do with our ability to complete things and sequence(do several things in a row); all of which is interfered with by a chemical imbalance.You might enjoy his book ADHD and The Nature of Self-Control .It's not for everyone but I think you'd enjoy it.Chapter 7 really explains his new theory on self-control and touches on his hypothesis that Inattentive Type is a separate disorder, which he refers to as SCT(Sluggish Cognitve-Tempo).That's not an "official" term yet so it's just of interest now.I really believe it would make for interesting reading for you Wheel.Take care.

I have a tendency to post and then edit errors. i frequently get responses before my "final version" is available.

It produces an intersting but strangly not unfamiliar distortion in communication.. :)

I am disappointed with the low number of elements he is willing to name and wrestle concurrently.

Metabolic pathways require scientists to deal with hundreds of steps with dozens of side processes accelerting or inhibiting the whole. Over simplification in the book you referred to drives me nuts. Especially when the detail is either already documented, or readily aparent from systems behavior.

From haveing designed systems and written software of significant complexity, the issues involved in the brain are gradations of several stages of hardware, software, firmware, interactions, and side effects.

That doesn't mean we have to just fall down.
Map them.
Conquer them.

I'd love the chance ot work this process up close and personal, and as of yet have not found a way to gain access to the materials and personal, and support my need for an income, at all much less at the same time. (Mechanically forming an interrogative: What can you do to help?)

The funny thing about teaching ADHD people to ask questions is that they are very accurate on the delcarative stuff, but they can't form the right question even when prompted. A video by one or another of Richard Lavoie or Robert brooks makes this point by accident. In the tape, i don't think the presenter gets that the student never learned to ask the right question, but was handed it or didn't get there. Even with prompting help, the student was not in a postion of needing agmentation, but substitution, which by implication means that the problem is an absence of ability rather than a diminishment.

Which is to say, that probably wasn't the right question to ask based on the facts! But I would be clueless to know how to derive it, so some one will simply have o recognize the need, and fill it. :)

One of my critisms of his model of self control is his reliance on what i consider to be a mal-formed "disinhibition" concept, for cause, and his over broad inclusiveness in th efunctions he calls by the single term "executive function."

With respect to the second, the analogy of "having a big block hemi and a bad transmision is stunningly accurate to the observed behavior as well as to the sense of it from the inside.

A contention that ADHD impairments make planning impossible is contradicted by my own experience... i program computers very very well. That is pure, abstract planning. And it segregates the execution very nicely. A computer "executes" instead of me. As a team we are formidable. For people who do not have a relationship with a computer, but have staff that "execute" for them, "technical prowess" required for computer use need not be present. But the concepual and functional fact of ANOTHER ENTITY performing the execution task, to me, clearly illustrates that the problem to those with ADHD is not so much planning per se, as plan capture, retention and execution.

These are obviously not of the nature of "executive functions" but are of the support level below executive functions.

For this reason I am dissatisfied with Barkleys proposed model of 'self-control."

I think I need to credit him though, with my recognition that i believe i will never have "self control" as others do. I can have responsibility and efficacy, however. And until society and researchers ar willing to split the concepts of self-control, efficacy and responsiblity, our society will be robbed of the potentially valuable contributions many people could be making today, if they were allowed to stop attempting to be what they cannot be, and stared being able to pursue efficacy and own responsibilty for themselves without self-control.

Excellent analogies.One of the things I should point out about dysinhibiton/self-control/self-regulation is that another neuropsychologist I greatly respect and had to pleasure of seeing in person a couple of years ago Sam Goldstein;says EXACTLY the same thing.His research has led him to the same spot and that's really worth noting.

Originally posted by mctavish23
Wow, That's a lot of stuff...lol.Very impressive.First let me say to Gary that I believe we are all responsible for what we say and do.Having said that, the underlying reasons then become very important.

Wheel,I don't pretend to understand the roulette wheel reference but thats impressive.


If you would like to ask a question, please do.

In minor anticipation, and i hope i do not offend here in doin gthis,

the poiint is that ADHD is most fundamentally a combination of
OBJECTIVE Reliabiliy and
SUBJECTIVE Significance of societally defined levels of reliabiilty.

That is to say, that though i will claim some features of ADHD come from an absolute lack of something, mostly that is not the case at the level of observation.

At the level of observation, slight changes in the objective measures of reliablity have major social and practical implications. I hesitate to offer a number, because i have not been able to collect data, but I refer you to another site, where signficant "imagination" qualties are generated by "perturbing" a nueral network about 6%.

www.imagination-engines.com

This emergent property deteriorates into uselessness at measures higher than 6%, and nothing 'special" happens at lower values. I would propose that in as much as ADHD people are "creative" they operate within that range of disruption. In as much as they are "too far out there" they have exceeded that percentage.

The numbers not withstanding, that ADHD ramifications are mostly socially responded to as measures of RELIABILITY rather than ABILTY, i think, should be instructive to the investigation.

The roulette wheel, and changing the number of green spots, changes the reliability of the "series of blacks in a row" and models the behavoir of people along a larger spectrum than we discuss here. If all but a few are turned black, on task behavoir represented by being able to perorm large numbers of steps in a row, flawlessly becomes "easy" but serving the demands of a complex life may become impossible: the idiot savant, or the absent minded professor/inventor/etc. simply too focused for adapted life in our "normal' setting.

Originally posted by mctavish23
Excellent analogies.One of the things I should point out about dysinhibiton/self-control/self-regulation is that another neuropsychologist I greatly respect and had to pleasure of seeing in person a couple of years ago Sam Goldstein;says EXACTLY the same thing.His research has led him to the same spot and that's really worth noting.

I apologize... i've lost the referent...

the same as what?

I've also read and listend to SAM. He is also very bright.

And i'd love to go toe to toe with some of his constructs as well.

Sometimes people make points they don't realize they are mking, and they do so elegantly, but they miss the fact because they are focused on somethng else, or some other consideration overwhelms the sense of it for them.

Einstien did that once with the introduction of a "constant" as i recall. He later retracked it. it happens to smart people all the time. It takes an external observer sometimes to recognize our greatest contributions.

Sam Goldstein has arrived at the exact same theory of ADHD being a disorder of self-regulation and control as Barkley with his own research in his own time.

Very well said.What I like about these guys is that they are true scientist's, so they base everything on research.That eliminates the subjective element in validating theory.In fact. Barkley went out of his way to say that his remarks were not anecdotal or based on clinical lore or experience.He discounts that completely when it comes to showing what works and/or why.

How can I say this....

I know that is what he beleives is his strenght, both of them actually, but they "attempt to prove" what they do because they sense it first.

On top of that, at least as represented in ADHD & Self-Control, Barkley fails to drive the knife in where i have indicated, and therefore limits the applicability of the model.

This is, fundamentally, a problem of reverse engineering an existing system. There are more things that can be taken with certainty than they are moving on, because they do not have the experiences of reverse engineering the desires of "normal" people (computer programming CUSTOMERS) with limited and broken brains (todays inferior level of computers and software.)

They could leapfrog their current positions and then TEST the constructs emperically in the next generation of experiements.

This is what frustrates me. I can CLEARLY SEE. I score very highly on the block design subtest. That subtest gives the answer and the parts and requests the the answer be constructed again. Even if they can't see this, and frankly, even if you can't, I can. And I am dieing to find a way to share it!

I don't know how to gain the access i need to be able to contribute.

Really, more htan help, i need a opportuntiy.

Originally posted by Garry Lawton
It may well be that it is the ADD that has caused you to screw up on that situation but it is your own doing that you have failed to set the mechanism in place to make sure that you got to the appointment.

This is understandable.

Where I seem to run into many problems is in example when you are hired to do a particular job of which you can not only do but do very well, and then someone who is deemed to have control over you (your Boss) decided that you can do something else usually on top of what you are already doing (quite often something that you have no interest in doing) then when it gets screwed up or not done then you end up paying the price for it.

Even when you try to make it clear that it was not part of the verbal contract that you were hired under.


I can appreciate that there is much work to do in the area of understanding the reasons for why ADD exists and what cause it,


but I also feel very strongly that if there was less work put into trying to understand why we are the way we are

and more work put into teaching the kids when they are at a young and impressionable age about what


Find the source of the fire and put it out at the source instead of battling with rooms that got burnt down and damaged in fire after its too late.

I'm babbling and probably way off topic by now so I will end this post for now anyway


I love these points! -- David !!!!!

It doesn't seem off topic to me!

Oops simple math problem...

100 - 2 = 98
98 / 2 = 49 not 48

so the chances of black are 49 in 100 not 48 in 100 as i sadi in my post.


Or more explicitly with units

100 total holes - 2 green holes = 98 net remaining holes

98 net remaining holes / 2 color groups of holes = 49 net remainng holes/ color group of holes

:) I love units.... < just kidding ! >

Originally posted by mctavish23
...ADHD is the consumate disorder of self-control and time management...

But it is the definition of "time managment as a leaf instead of a node, or as a single thing rather than a compound thing which dead-ends this statement.

To my view, time management is the planning, and the execution. But as these go they are not primary operations but composed of others as well. This is not an infinite reductionism, but it is significant in length and complexity, and unexplored to my knowledge either by Barkley or Sam Goldstein.

Planning and execution share some low level functions and do not share others. Complexities are revealed and occure as execution of tasks required in planning are considered.

This kind of daisy chained reference is not unknown in software engineering, and resolving the issues it raises is not hopeless but tedious and handled. The same needs to be done here for inellectual work flow process understanding.

I'd like to say though that "inhibition" too loosely thrown around. Were my inhibition actually as low as it is proposed to be by some of these theories, i'd have children by many women, and be in jail. That that is true of many others is not proof but indication of a greater complexity than this simplicity admits.

Besides, at many levels,
inhibition by self-control and
inhibition by self-defeat and
inhibition by efficacy and
inhibition by environment and
inhibition by others
are not distinguished, and said differrences are of central importance to the extensibility of the model.

I think that the relationship between ADHD and Autism is important in thinking about this stuff. Basically, there are a lot of similarities but the thing that they don't talk about is that ADHD is pervasive. Autism and other spectrum disorders are called PDD (pervasive developmental disorders) which means that it colours/affects every aspect of that person's being. ADHD is pervasive too, just not as debilitating as some forms of autism. It's the way we are. All behaviours and defecits are the result of being made different. It's totally genetic, not caused by external or situational factors, although these things can make it worse.

Originally posted by tudorose
I think that the relationship between ADHD and Autism is important in thinking about this stuff. Basically, there are a lot of similarities but the thing that they don't talk about is that ADHD is pervasive. Autism and other spectrum disorders are called PDD (pervasive developmental disorders) which means that it colours/affects every aspect of that person's being. ADHD is pervasive too, just not as debilitating as some forms of autism. It's the way we are. All behaviours and defecits are the result of being made different. It's totally genetic, not caused by external or situational factors, although these things can make it worse.

I'd only change ONE WORD in your post. I don't think we know enough to say what it IS, but we do know what it is not and what makes it worse.

In a sick way it was ammussing to me over the last years to watch people claim that ADHD STARTED at age 5 (When kids go to school and have 30 control subjects around them for comparison with a single observer, the teacher) and STOPPED at 18 (when the distraught ADHDers left school and were no longer observed in that setting!)

The characteristics ascribed to ADHD were ENTIRELY artifact of the observation menthod used.

Likewise, to date, we have only genetics as a model that seems to carry the characteristics we seek in describing ADHD. But as of yet, no conclusive evidence exists to support that any single factor creates ADHD, even though there is importance in identifying characteristics we can associate with this condition, this way of being.

I have seen so many people either WITH ADHD or connected to someone with ADHD (spouse, parent, friend, employer) surprised that this "inconsistency" condition goes EVERYWHERE.

That is a very important feature that you bring up!

In my view, task and setting can reveal, but not cause, what we take to be ADHD.