To cut a long story short, at 6 years of age i was diagnosed as ADD after a very brief session with an ADD specialist as a child (wanted to put me on ritalin), after my parents had been greatly concerned with my level of attention. I should also note, throughout my childhood i had to sit Weschler IQ tests and visit speech-language therapists, and i think occupational therapists also. I am officially diagnosed with a Specific Language Impairment (mixed receptive/expressive language disorder too). So i basically had a language disorder too. What has recently startled me however is that at 19 years of age recently i went to see an ADD specialist to have my past diagnosis reconfirmed. Well according to the CAARS rating scales i AM and ADHD-Innattentive (what i was expecting) . . BUT . . . heres the catch. According to my results in the TOVA test, i can't really be ADD. The therapist was very suprised by the results. My response time was rated very high at 135 and the second half of the test is thought to be invalid due to '>= 10% anticipatory errors.' In the first half of the test however i had an ommission error score <40 which is considered a significantly below average result, and a commission error result within the normal range.

My interpretation? Probably should have resat the TOVA test, but otherwise im thinking i either have a coinciding language and attention disorder, or look to have a primary language disorder which has as a result brought about innattentive symptoms into my life, such as very deep internalising behaviours whereby i daydream very much, process slow, walk around with a fog over my head, seem very introverted, lack social skills, sensory overload. If you have any questions about the Weschler sub-test results, or anything else please ask? What do you think otherwise?

There is no test for ADHD. Any testing that is done is to screen out learning disabilities. A diagnosis is based on complaints, history and observation by someone who knows what to ask and what to look for.

there are medical conditions though that can cause problems with the executive function.. I know this personally because i have one of those disorders...
hypokalemia periodic paralysis aka or specifically andersen tawil disorder... my clouded thinking and executive function problems were brought on by this potassium ion channelopathies... sometimes there are underlying medical causes that bring on add like symptoms..
for example chronic fatique, fibromyalgia (called fibro fog) hypokalemic partial paralysis and numerous other genetic conditions... there is a post here by hollyduck that lead me to my correct diagnosis

kattsqueen

Losti

The TOVA is not really a very good instrument for diagnosing ADHD. It has too many false negatives and positives. It does have its usages but not for primary diagnosis.

To gain some understanding of why I say this you might look at this transcript of a workshop by Russell Barkley. Barkley is by far considered the top person in the field and some, including myself, consider it to be the best write up on ADHD available on the internet. It is dated 2000 but most of the data is still basically pretty good. I do warn however that this is forty pages long and Barkley is information dense. It can be a bit of a struggle to work though and you probably will have to read through some sections several times but it is, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others, very much worth the effort. I am going to suggest you start with this overview and then download or read the article from there.

http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/2054

The sections on diagnosis begins on page 2 and the TOVA is discussed on page 8.

Good luck. The best single tool in working with ADHD is accurate information on the disorder.


Dizfriz

The Number one Criteria for Diagnosing ADHD is patient history. All Tests are just supplementary.