This is a nice succinct outline of the theories of a guy who is apparently a pretty well respected expert on ADD:
http://www.pendulum.org/related/related_add_barkley.html

What is nice is that he ties the disparate symptoms into the core cause of impulsiveness. Lots of good explanations of how that leads to the other symptoms. I'll go through this and try to relate my symptoms to this approach but let me put it out there for now.

Book:Taking Charge of ADHD

Very good read. Puts into very understandable terms. I think I may print it and have my non ADD wife read it. Thanks Paul!
Jim

Thanks Paul for posting about this article. I am printing it to read and will comment later.

I downloaded a large document ( 117pgs) from a seminar that barkley did in 2000 on ADD that was very good from Scwablearning.org. It's worth a read too.

Great link - paulbf

I printed it out and gave it to the principals and asst principals at my son's high school (i also work there) - maybe some of this can be useful in future workshops for teachers - who tend to "label" students when the really don't know the problem or understand it.

paulbf thanks for the link..

Lattebon did you mean:
http://schwablearning.org

So much to read.. so little time... < g >

Cheers! Ian.

Is this the link you had in mind paulbf?

http://www.schwablearning.org/pdfs/2200_7-barktran.pdf

Here is a more recent lecture of Barkley's from the same site.http://www.schwablearning.org/articles.asp?r=54

Cheers! Ian.

OK, from that longer link, I see that he classifies inattentive ADD as a completely different situation. He says only 20% respond significantly to medication and that impulsiveness is not a problem. He also says there are almost no studies and almost nothing is known about inattentive type ADD. I don't know, he works afully hard to make things fit his preconceptions and bends the logic sometimes because I can relate to a lot of the common ADHD symptoms although I'm clearly more the inattentive type.

“Selective attention is how quickly you can deduce what’s important from unimportant in a spatial array of information, how fast you accurately process information coming at you. AD/HD children have no trouble with selective attention.”

Sheesh, no wonder this guy is not on the best seller's list:

"Also over the last decade we’ve identified a number of neuropsychological deficits that go with AD/HD. Why are they there? Here’s one. Let’s just take that one, for example. Seven studies document that AD/HD delays the internalization of speech. Why do you care? Well, this is why you should care. The internalization of speech is unique to humans. There is no other species that takes a form of communication and turns it on itself and makes it internal. We do that. AD/HD delays that. Why? The internalization of language. as Vigotsky taught us many years ago when he started describing this developmental sequence, does three things for us that are crucial for a group living social species. First, it is the origin of verbal thinking. The internalization of speech is where verbal thought originates and AD/HD is delaying that sequence by 30 to 40 percent. AD/HD is delaying verbal thinking.

Next, the internalization of speech is the means by which you socialize a child into a culture. What does that tell you about AD/HD? They’re going to be very hard to socialize into the rules of a culture. The internalization of language is the basis for moral behavior, the moral guidance of behavior by rules of the community. You now know something about AD/HD. You would predict that it would delay moral development. And yet you’re just passing that off. That’s just another finding in the literature about AD/HD. That is a profound finding in the literature about AD/HD. That is far more important than any stupid attention deficit is ever going to be. That the internalization of language is delayed by this disorder allows us to make predictions about these kids; that verbal thinking is delayed, that socialization will be harder, that they will be more prone to antisocial behavior, that moral behavior will be delayed as well. All from that one sentence. And why is it there? This is what a theory would do. It would tell you why that’s there. The current view of AD/HD is oh, it’s just an attention deficit, as though that explains all of this. That is so trivial, so superficial, so
44 undignifying that it doesn’t deserve any more comment. There is more to this disorder than just, "Oh, he can’t concentrate"."

Like beef jerky.. I'm going to chew on that a while. Thanks for posting.
Cheers! Ian