Thesis (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Theses (Faculty of Education) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-91). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-91). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Graduate School, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-59).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-136).

Thesis (M. Ed.(Opv. Sielk.)--Universiteit van Pretoria, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Marshall University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 48 p. and illustrations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-47).

In addition to the increased risk they face for social and academic problems, adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) must also contend with stigma attached to the disorder. For instance, youth prefer greater social distance from students described with ADHD symptoms than from peers with asthma (Walker, Coleman, Lee, Squire, & Friesen, 2008), and adolescents are also reluctant to engage in activities (e.g., go to the movies, study together) with a peer described with ADHD symptoms compared to peers described as obese or autistic (Law, Sinclair, & Fraser, 2007). Familiarity with individuals diagnosed with ADHD may influence adolescents' perceptions of their peers with ADHD, but the extant research on this relationship in adolescents is limited and mixed. The purpose of this study was to investigate middle school students' familiarity with ADHD, their willingness to engage in activities with a peer exhibiting ADHD symptoms, and how familiarity impacts their willingness to engage in a variety of activities with that peer. A sample of middle school students (N = 176) completed self-report measures of contact with ADHD and willingness to engage with a peer described in a vignette. Participants were randomly assigned vignettes describing either a peer displaying ADHD symptoms or a typical peer, employing a true experimental design. Middle school students expressed greater willingness to engage with a typical peer than one with ADHD symptoms overall. However, a significant difference (p < .05) was found only for academic activities, and not for social and recreational activities. This difference was present regardless of the inclusion of positive characteristics in the description of the peer with ADHD, suggesting that it is something about ADHD symptoms leading to middle school students' reluctance, not simply the lack of appealing characteristics. Additionally, approximately 70% of middle school students indicated some contact with ADHD, although familiarity with ADHD was not found to predict participants' willingness to engage in activities with a peer with ADHD symptoms. Implications for school psychologists and directions for future research are discussed.

Aims: The aim of this research was to engage with the experiences of professionals, parents, and young people in order to develop an understanding of the current diagnosis and management of ADHD. This research will be of interest to Counselling Psychologists working with the child and adolescent population and the clinical area of ADHD. Method: Nine semi- structured interviews were conducted with two young people, three parents, and four professionals. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using the principles’ of grounded theory methods. A constructivist version of grounded theory was implemented, as outlined by Charmaz (2006) and a social constructionist epistemology was adopted. Analysis: A central story line of ‘investing in ADHD’ emerged. This involved the investment of resources in the ‘simple truth’ of ADHD as existing within the child’s brain. A number of categories emerged which contributed to this position, including the ‘battlegrounds’ which were fraught with struggles to gain control of children’s difficult to manage behaviours and ‘knowledge and understanding’ which highlighted the need to understand the nature of the perceived problems. In addition, ‘social expectations’ and ‘personal conflicts’ depicted the social and personal factors which served to construct the perceived problems. Conclusion: The investment in the ‘simple truth’ of ADHD appeared to hold the most meaning for those involved in the study. These findings offer utility for Counselling Psychologists wishing to engage clients in psychological formulation and management approaches which aim to address the underlying factors which influence ADHD.

ADHD is a highly prevalent disorder in both children and adults that involves significant impairment throughout the lifespan, and yet the core cognitive deficits of the disorder are not well understood. Accumulating evidence of dysfunctioning dopamine systems motivated the theory that delay-of-reinforcement gradients are altered in ADHD in such a way that reinforcers must arrive earlier in time following a response for an association between the two to be learned. The current work is motivated by the conjecture that dopamine dysfunction has consequences for the maximum timescales over which connections can be formed, not just in reinforcement learning, but also in the processes of temporal integration and scene formation that allow humans to understand and navigate their world. There is a maximum window of temporal separation over which discrete events can be integrated into a unified experience, and the current experiments indicate that this maximum window of integration is contracted in ADHD. The experiments included multiple tasks designed so that the participant response required implicit integration over temporal intervals, and the length of those intervals was varied as an independent variable. Adults with and without ADHD completed these tasks, and the strength of temporal integration was measured with respect to interval length and compared between the two groups. This methodology was applied in five types of tasks: rhythmic tapping, spatial cuing, irrelevant feature priming, and two apparent motion tasks. On the whole, this suite of studies was successful in demonstrating a contraction in the maximum interval over which temporal integration can occur in ADHD relative to controls. Two of the tasks, rhythmic tapping and spatial cuing, generated unexpected and interesting results, and several follow-up tasks were designed to further explore these findings. As a result, a somewhat improved tapping task was discovered. This tapping task, as well as the irrelevant feature priming task and one of the apparent motion tasks, demonstrated potential utility for the diagnosis of adults with ADHD. / text