I just sat through this talk about how you can maybe treat ADHD by treating associated working memory deficits that pissed me off.
Working memory is supposed to be useful for "goal-directed activity." The behavioural patterns associated with ADHD include things like poor academic performance, not sitting still in class, talking out of turn, and poor performance in memory tasks in the lab. It strikes me that all these behaviours involve goals imposed on them by authorities, authorities who then cite a child's reluctance to subordinate his own goals to the goals of the authority as evidence of a "disorder" that requires pharmacological intervention or behavioural modification therapy. Seems to me like ADHD is an independent-minded social strategy that doesn't fit well with our social system, so we're trying to modify the individuals to fit the system, rather than the other way around. Procrustes smiles.
When I brought this up to the speaker, she cited ADHD kids' poor perform at video games ("their favorite thing to do!") as evidence for inability to perform well at their own goals. I've played video games; sometimes you just don't want to do what you have to do to "win." Sometime you just want to go jump on that thing and see what happens. When I questioned the ecological validity of video games, she said something about how when they play baseball ("what could be more ecologically valid!?") they have trouble remembering how many outs there are or some shit. Uh, maybe they just want to catch and throw a ball without keeping score? God forbid we try to have fun without a way to keep track of winners and losers.
It just strongly felt to me that I was in the presence of the worst evil of academia, where some "expert" is highly paid to make it sound like fucking people up to serve the interests of power is somehow "science" that we should all take seriously and respect. Fuck them.
My friend at Think Love, who studies psychological phenomena related to so-called ADHD, has some further commentary, touching on some important points like how this kind of "science" is funded, and what might constitute natural child behaviour (hint: it doesn't involve sitting still in a classroom all day and filling in the right circles with a #2 pencil).
4 comments:
Wow Adam---seems like this researcher was completely unwilling/unable to think about the point you were trying to make. And I love that she chose baseball when questioned on ecological value! What could be more relevant? Seriously though, would she have satisfied you by arguing that baseball is a team sport which requires cooperation and other social skills, which would certainly have more ecological value than playing video games for an organism that has obviously evolved to function in a highly social context?
In her defense, she did say a bunch of other things in response to my questions, some of which may have had some value, but I was too distracted by her obviously bad answers and didn't absorb the other things she said.
Your point about baseball still involves socially-imposed goals. There's nothing wrong with a kid who likes some aspects of baseball - throwing, catching, hitting - but doesn't care about the structure. I'm not arguing that following rules, on a baseball field or in a classroom, has no value. I'm saying that having little interest in those rules seems like a social strategy of independence and we're trying to squash that independence.
did anyone talk about autism or neurodiversity? what were her suggestions for "treatment"?
her response to one of my questions did veer off towards autism, if my memory is correct. i think she linked the conditions somehow, but the details are hazy.
her treatment involved some kind of short-term memory training regime, again my memory is a bit fuzzy now. but it wasn't drugs at least.
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