ADHD, What is it?
Understanding learning disabilities and disorders is essential for many reasons. It creates diverse spaces where educators and facilitators can support these individuals through revised and comprehensive teaching methods to promote the eradication of elusive education. Additionally, early diagnosis can provide insight into how these persons, specifically students, can be taught and treated to help overcome challenging educational environments. One of the most common learning disorders is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a medical condition that affects behavioral patterns. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the estimated number of children between the ages of 3 to 17 years who were diagnosed with ADHD–Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder–was 6 million. This neurodevelopmental disorder affects children and adults but is usually diagnosed during childhood. It involves highly repetitive patterns of difficulty paying attention, being overly active, and presenting obsessive, controlling behaviors. In psychology, aside from behavioral therapy and medication, learning theories are applied to help persons dealing with this disorder and persons surrounding those with the disorder to navigate ADHD based on specified learning and behavioral needs.
In conjunction with ADHD, it is of utmost importance to be aware of how environmental factors and social interactions affect the development and progression of the disorder. The positive trajectory can aid children with ADHD, as their learning is based on social encounters, including classroom and family activities. Using these relationships to improve their behavior can help how they cope because individuals continue to learn through observation and, by extension, become adaptive. This theory, with relevance to Bandura, focuses on self-efficacy and outcome expectancies.
Bandura (1977) describes self-efficacy as an individual’s belief in one’s ability to organize and execute assigned tasks with high performance rates. Understanding individual self-efficacy can assist teachers, parents, and peers in providing motivation that enhances attitudes and behavior in the social environment of a classroom. To add, its evaluation creates a space for capacity building. Depending on the child’s circumstance, applying various teaching methods can prevent some students from being left behind in classes or feeling like they do not belong due to the pace at which they are being taught. It also plays a significant role in the success of how students with ADHD can overcome, little by little, their attention span, obsession with particular activities, or even their impulsiveness to maybe blurt out in class, which may cause disruption. Bandura (1986) also mentions outcome expectancies, the anticipation of positive or negative results of one’s behavior. In light of those with the disorder, being knowledgeable of outcome expectancy can help understand and improve certain behaviors associated with the disorder. It influences decision-making and can limit impulsive actions and behaviors if the question of what would happen is answered correctly. Observing whether persons with ADHD have positive or negative self-efficacy and high or low outcome expectancy can determine the means of intervention that is most effective in the social learning environment to improve academic success. Self-efficacy and outcome expectancy are collective, as one cannot be understood without the other.
It is posited that the cognitive power of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is widely affected. This includes the lack of attention control, inability to be easily settled, and incapacity to control impulsive thoughts and actions.
The sensorimotor stage allows for learning through the five senses of smell, touch, taste, feeling, and hearing; it is a period of sensory adaptation. Sensorimotor difficulties may have a slight linkage to ADHD. Still, it is not the entire reason when comparing other cognitive issues. The preoperational stage facilitates learning through pretend play. This plays a major role in a child’s development stage as it encourages problem-solving, creative thinking, and the acquisition of responsibility. Children diagnosed with the disorder may showcase similar characteristics while in this stage. It can range from demonstrating the child’s inability to be attentive to the lack of prompt responses in playful situations. Compared to the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage is the opposite; it utilizes logic, structure, and experiments. This development usually occurs from ages 7 to 11 and aids in children using problem-solving skills from pretend play in real-life situations. Some aspects of the concrete stage prove relevance in comprehending particular challenges posed by those with ADHD. There are conflicts with working memory, organizing and completing tasks and assignments, and following sequential steps that would aid in organizing assignments. Also, some children cannot partake in logical thinking and thought processing due to impulsivity and inattentiveness. The formal operations stage uses deductive reasoning to understand abstract and hypothetical ideas. This allows children and adults to perceive ideas from various perspectives while deconstructing and reconstructing ideas to develop new and improved solutions. Some students may find it difficult to achieve abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking due to ADHD-related symptoms.
Edited by: Esther Chung