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The principal aim of this research was to investigate primary school children's conative and cognitive attitudes towards children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Depression and Learning Disabilities (LD). It is suggested that if children's attitudes towards ADHD, Depression and LD are better understood, steps can be taken to reduce the negative impact and consequences of stigma on children with these difficulties (e.g. Corrigan & Watson, 2002; Wahl, 1999). Secondary, exploratory research aims were to assess, a) the relationship between children's own conative attitudes and their perceived parental and peer conative attitudes and, b) investigate whether there were any relationships between children's own conative and cognitive attitudes and demographic variables (e.g. gender). The research involved 273 primary school children aged between 7-11 years. The children heard a vignette describing a child with ADHD, Depression, LD or a 'normal' child. They then completed the Shared Activities Questionnaire (SAQ - Morgan, Walker, Bieberich & Bell, 1996), to assess the conative component of attitudes and the Adjective Checklist (ACL - Siperstein, 1980; 2006), to assess the cognitive component of attitudes. This research utilised a mixed, between groups design involving a cross- sectional assessment of attitudes across four groups (ADHD, Depression, LD 4 and a normal child) using two dependant variables (SAQ and ACL). Repeated measures were utilised to determine relationships between children's own and perceived parental and peer attitudes using the SAQ. Results showed that children had more negative conative and cognitive attitudes overall towards the ADHD, Depression and LD vignettes compared to the normal vignette. Children had more negative conative and cognitive attitudes towards the ADHD vignette than the LD vignette and more negative cognitive attitudes towards the Depression vignette than the LD vignette; hence, generally they displayed more negative attitudes to Mental Health Difficulties (MHD - ADHD and Depression) than LD. Finally, children had more negative conative and cognitive attitudes towards the ADHD (externalising disorder) vignette than the Depression vignette (internalising disorder). With regards to the exploratory aspects of the research, age and perceived levels of contact were found to impact on attitudes. The younger children (7 - 9 years) had more positive conative attitudes towards all of the vignettes when compared to the older children (9.1 - 11.4 years). Children who felt they had contact in the past with children similar to the vignette had more positive conative and cognitive attitudes than those who felt they had had no contact. There were no differences found between the children's own conative attitudes and their perceptions of their parental and peer conative attitudes. 5 -~ The research findings suggest that stigmatised attitudes towards children with ADHD, Depression and LD remain in schools, despite government attempts to promote inclusion and acceptance. The study findings can enhance current stigma reduction interventions, through contributing a deeper understanding Of children's conative and cognitive attitudes towards the most common MHD and LD in childhood.

There are three sections to this thesis; 1. A review of the literature pertaining to mothers of children with ADHD. Findings of studies in the following areas are summarised and critically discussed; parenting stress, family functioning, parental factors related to child antisocial behaviours and mother- child interactions. Some implications for further research and clinical practice are outlined. 2. A research report of a study which employed semi-structured interviews and Interpretational Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore six mothers' experience of their sons' ADHD. Three themes emerged from the analysis of the interview transcripts; 1. The struggle to understand and explain the child. 2. Shouldering the burden. 3. The significance of diagnosis and treatment. The results are discussed in relation to relevant literature. Some clinical implications are considered. 3. A critical appraisal of the research project, giving an account of the project from its inception to completion of the thesis and including some reflections upon the impact of the research on the author.

This thesis examines context effects in relation to the performance of children with ADHD in test and 'real world' situations. There is a wealth of empirical research that illustrates poor performance of these children on a range of cognitive measures, particularly tasks that claim to measure executive function and inhibitory control. However, anecdotal reports have suggested that while playing computer games these children display abilities that contrast sharply with empirical findings. This contrast was the basis for a series of studies using computer games and computerised tasks to investigate the performance of children with ADHD across contexts. The first investigation (Study 1), a questionnaire study, lent support to the anecdotal reports. Parents of children with ADHD confirmed that their children were able to sit still, concentrate, pay attention and achieve higher levels of success when playing computer games. In Study 2 parents of children with ADHD were asked to discuss the features of computer games they felt were most influential in contributing to their child's interest and performance. Observations made in the Study 3 provided further confirmation that performance improves when children with ADHD play computer games; performance in terms of error making and and on-task activity on a standardised test of inhibition and attention, the Conners' Continuous Performance Test II (CPT II), was significantly poorer than performance on a more 'game' like Pokemon version of the task and significantly different to the performance of typically developing children. Features of computer games that may have contributed to the observed improvements for children with ADHD were examined in four subsequent studies. These features included the addition of narrative, the addition of a points scoring system, the addition of character, auditory reinforcement and differing levels of response cost. Inhibitory performance on two commercially available games was also investigated (Study 8), and the performance of participants with ADHD was not significantly different to that of typically developing participants. The results raise questions about current understanding of the disorder and models of ADHD, stress the need for examining contextual sensitivity of children with apparently constitutional disorders such as ADHD, and have implications for methodological design and the contexts in which cognitive abilities are investigated.