Hyperfocus adhd
HYPERFOCUS ADHD SERIES
Sam: So your research looks at hyperfocus. Something that would actually cause a real problem in their life. It would have to make it so that they don’t do their homework or aren’t paying attention during the work day or things along those lines. Sam: So if there was one defining rule of identifying someone with ADHD, what would you say?īrandon: I would say that generally, to say that someone has a particular symptom of ADHD, their behaviour that’s related to that symptom would have to actually interfere with their life in some way. Just to give you an example, you can imagine something like having difficulty maintaining focus on a task but how do you decide when someone’s having difficulty doing that? So let’s say you’re a teacher in a school and you have to decide if Billy can’t focus on a particular task, how do you measure that? Is it how many times he looks up from his desk over the course of five minutes, and if that’s the case, is looking up five times over the course of five minutes enough to say he’s having trouble? Would it be twenty times? Are there other ways that you can figure that out? It’s hard to actually diagnose and so a lot of it comes down to the subjective decision of either the teacher or the parent or the doctor who’s kind of determining the, doing the assessment. There's a lot of subjectivity also that goes into a diagnosis. Sam: Right, so it’s quite a confusing condition initially to diagnose.īrandon: Yeah, absolutely. In fact they tend to group them in two or three different categories one being ADHD inattentive type, which is mostly symptoms that fall into the inattentive category ADHD hyperactive type, which are people who have symptoms that mostly fall into the hyperactive category and the impulsive category and ADHD combined type which are people who have symptoms that fall into all of those categories in a large mix of them. People with ADHD have a variety of combinations of these different types of symptoms, so there’s no one set type of ADHD. The second category would be hyperactive symptoms which would be things like being constantly in motion, having difficulty doing quiet tasks or activities, and the third one would be impulsive tasks, which would be being very impatient, interrupting conversations and having difficulty waiting for things that you want to do. They tend to fall into three categories: the first category would be inattentive symptoms which are things along the lines of not listening when spoken to, having difficulty maintaining focus on a task and becoming bored with a task after only a few minutes.
HYPERFOCUS ADHD SERIES
First off, can you just explain about what ADHD is?īrandon: ADHD is a disorder which presents with a series of different types of symptoms. Sam: So Brandon, your research looks at hyperfocus of the brain, with a specific interest of hyperfocus within people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Sam: So we’re here today with Brandon Ashinoff who’s a Doctoral Researcher in the School of Psychology, here at the University of Birmingham. In each edition we hear from an expert in a different field, who gives us insider information on key trends, upcoming events, and what they think the near future holds. Intro VO: Welcome to the Ideas Lab Predictor Podcast from the University of Birmingham. Interviewer: Lucy Vernall (Interviewer, Ideas Lab)
