Helping children do better in school
by focusing on attention, working memory, and cognitive processing
Attention is the ability to bring the working focus of your mind to bear on one task, to the exclusion of others. There are many varieties of attention.
- The ability to focus on specific types of information input: what is seen, heard, or felt.
- The ability to maintain focus sufficiently to complete or execute a task.
- The ability to pick the best thing to do next, ignoring that which may not be prudent or productive.
- The ability to change focus to a newer, more urgent, more important subject.
In many ways the problem of attention deficit is much like fever. Fever is not a diagnosis. It is a symptom that can be caused by a huge number of conditions. When you take your child with a fever to the doctor, you would be very disappointed if the doctor only told you he or she had a fever, and not the cause of the fever- such as an ear infection, a virus, or pneumonia, for example. Similarly with attention deficit.
Trouble paying attention is a symptom, not a diagnosis. AD/HD is just one of six possible reasons your child may not be paying attention:
- emotions: e.g., depression, anxiety
- cognitive dysfunction: e.g., dyslexia, working memory dysfunction, processing dysfunctions
- conflicts: e.g., mismatch with teacher, trouble with bullies, strains in the family.
- physical illness: just about any illness can interfere with focus
- personality: e.g., oppositional defiant, or conduct disorders
- ad/hd
Standardized questionnaires ask parents and teachers to rate the severity of various symptoms. This yields a reliable measure of that person's opinion about the child's symptoms. These questionnaires have their place in evaluation, but they should never be the only basis for a diagnosis. A very careful evaluation by a pediatric neuropsychologist for all the various reasons cite above will measure the child's attentional function directly and allow for a very reliable, very precise evaluation of your child.
