Difficulties in Comprehending Causal Relations

¶ … Difficulties in Comprehending Causal Relations Among Children With ADHD: The Role of Cognitive Engagement" from the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (2004) is a significant report on the condition of ADHD in children. This article opens by acknowledging the significant academic difficulties that are experienced by students with ADHD, which are well documented in many studies. However, there has been a significant lack of research documenting the specific ways in which the comprehension and memory processes for complex, interconnected information differ between ADHD and normal children. An effective method that may be used to research these comprehension and memory processes is televised stories, which has been used in several documented studies that have produced consistent results.

In order to measure visual attention levels, researchers have had both ADHD and non-ADHD children view one television program in a room with no toys, and another television program in a room with toys. With no toys in the room, both ADHD and non-ADHD children averaged over 90% visual attention to the program. With toys in the room, ADHD children had a far larger drop in the amount of visual attention paid to the program than the non-ADHD children. There was no difference in the understanding of factual events between the groups of children. The ADHD group did have a larger drop in their understanding of causal relations compared to non-ADHD children when toys distracted them from the program. The question, then, is why the ADHD children are able to maintain this understanding of factual events, but not of the causal relations. Possible causes proposed include that children with ADHD shift visual attention more frequently which disrupts the continuity of the story processing, or that ADHD children look at the television for shorter spans of time with toys present which would also impair ability to construct the story. The first proposition has been shown to be unlikely, while the second has some evidence to support it. The reason that longer looks at the television may assist in causal relations comprehension is because they reflect greater cognitive engagement.

The phenomenon of attentional inertia suggests that the longer a look is maintained, the more likely it is to continue to be maintained; a look is most likely to be terminated in the first three seconds. Long looks have been linked to increased cognitive engagement and deeper processing. Studies have proven this in both adults and children, but not specifically between ADHD and non-ADHD children. This is the reason that the work done by these researchers is so monumental, it is the first study of its kind. This research applies previously tested information about cognitive engagement measured by visual engagement to the field of ADHD research. This kind of innovative research is precisely what is needed in order to make advances in the field of ADHD treatment.

The original research conducted compared 70 ADHD children with 64 non-ADHD children. The ADHD children suspended all medical treatment for their disorder on the day of the test. The children were each shown one program with toys and without toys available; the first session was for completion of the television and recall tasks while the second session was for tests of achievement and intelligence. Four pieces of evidence combine to support the hypothesis that ADHD children have more difficulty in understanding causal relations of the television show when toys are present due to less sustained cognitive engagement. The evidence all points to longer looks at the television, which occurred more frequently in non-ADHD children when toys were present, lead to a greater understanding of causal relations, which attentional inertia theories link to cognitive engagement.

Finally, the reasons presented as to why longer looks do in fact lead to a better understanding of causal relations were addressed. Possibilities include that long looks are more likely than short looks to continue across content boundaries, which allows the viewer to establish causal links among events relatively distant in time. Another explanation is that long looks indicate that the children are engaged in deeper processing of more story content. The conclusion of the study is that ADHD children are just as able to comprehend story information as non-ADHD children when no distractions are present. In essence, ADHD children do not have educational difficulties because they are less able to comprehend the material, but rather they are distracted from the material because it is not as appealing as whatever is distracting them.