Getting to the Root Cause of Attention Issues and ADHD. The Research Says……

ADHD is one of the most common difficulties in children and adults and recently published research an help us better understand the contributors to ADHD and how to improve attention skills.

A peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of Mental Health and Clinical Psychology uncovers why many struggle with ADHD and the key contributors to the diagnosis.

The key takeaways from the study are:

• For more than 5,000 children and adults in the study and diagnosed with ADHD, attention was not the weakest cognitive skill.
• The greatest cognitive deficits were working memory, long-term memory and processing speed. Sustained attention was the fourth weakest skill of the seven skills measured.

These are surprising results as one would expect attention to be the weakest skill for those diagnosed and looking for help with ADHD symptoms.

This research demonstrates that when an individual struggles with attention (ADHD) issues, typically attention is not the actual issue or the only factor to be addressed. In many cases, the root cause of attention issues are weaknesses in other cognitive skills like processing speed and working memory.

How does this work? Let’s say a child has slow processing speed. This cognitive weakness means that it will require that child to expend much more mental effort to complete a task like reading or math or homework. Given he has to expend much more energy than others, he has more limited ability to sustain his attention as compared to others who do not struggle with slow processing speed.

The result? The child will tend to zone out, need mental breaks and struggle to tune-out distractions.

Knowing this is encouraging news as it enables us to address the drivers and root cause of attention (ADHD) issues! Addressing these cognitive weaknesses through LearningRx training can significantly improve attention skills. The conclusion this research draws is that if you are trying to help ADHD difficulties solely with medication, you are not actually addressing the root cause.

The first step is to contact LearningRx and schedule a standardized assessment. The assessment will help identify the root cause as to why your child may struggle with ADHD and how she can be helped. Attention issues can be improved!