David,
Your ADHD study appears to involve two perceptions you wish to control.
One is the development of a non-drug therapy for ADHD, the other is a test
of PCT (leading to greater acceptance). These control systems might
dovetail nicely, but they might not. You need to address the following
questions. How will neurofeedback change a parameter in the control systems
that lead to ADHD? And what parameter exactly? Bill and I seem to
disagree about what might be the underlying source of ADHD (is it
differences in the environmental variable or differences in the input
function). On the other hand, in PCT the source of the variance is not
necessarily critical. Changes to the input function, reference level,
output function, or environmental variable are all possible means for
intervention. But which are you suggesting? Without that
discussion/theorizing you are simply suggesting that biofeedback can result
in a change in a distinguishing factor of ADHD (the amount of beta v. alpha
brain waves). This is hardly a compelling test of PCT if you have no PCT
explanation for the cause of the distinguishing factor much less the reason
the neurofeedback impacts that cause. Thus you will probably have no
effect on the second perception you (and I) wish to control. Further, your
use of Bill's tracking tasks do not, in my opinion, help in controlling
that second perception.
To control that second perception you a) need to theorize a PCT explanation
and b) describe why your intervention validates that explanation and
invalidates other, competing, explanations. If no other explanations exist
But I just can't believe that millions upon millions of children have a
medical disorder -- "frontal lobe deficits" -- that requires drug treatment
by a doctor. The vast numbers of children diagnosed as ADHD, it seems to
me, amount to a diagnosis of the system under which we're trying to raise
them. ADHD is a consequence of something we're doing to the children;
there's nothing wrong with most of them. That's my strong suspicion.
I am sympathetic with this argument. However, not with this argument:
And simply by treating
a child as if he or she is defective, you help to destroy confidence and
self-respect -- a crime, if you happen to be wrong.
Some subset of children diagnosed with ADHD would appreciate the means for
dealing with the "boring" situations that confront them. Such a means
would increase confidence and self-respect. It seems that the first
perception that I am suggesting that you are trying to control (a non-drug
therapy) is laudable for this reason (although I have no problem with drugs
per se). Particularly if your therapy was not designed to change the
variance in the environmental variable (amount of signalling), but in the
output function (channel the desire for stimulation in useful ways).
However, my guess is that at least for the extreme cases, short of
dampening gain, changes to the output function will not be sufficient (this
statement assumes gain is a part of the output function).
Nonetheless, Bill's argument is one reason I am interested in matching
individuals to the environments that would best suit them. We need
augmenters working on vigilance tasks and reducers working on high
stimulation tasks (or in high stimulation environments). If the variance
in stimulations in classrooms do not
match the variance in stimulations in the adult world, than part of what
ADHD is about is claiming humans should be more homogeneous than is
justified in the real world.
Food for thought,
From: David M. Goldstein
Subject: [From Bill Powers (971201.0914 MST)]
Date: 12/4/97
Bill Powers said to Jeff Vancouver:
"Why not just say that the
sensitivity of perceptual input functions varies?"
Bill, how would you go about measuring this, say in a pursuit tracking
task?
The discussion on the proprosed ADHD study seems to have maxed out.
Perhaps this is because many of the people on the net are not familiar
enough with ADHD to feel comfortable to make suggestions.
Russell Barclay, who has a reputation as an expert on ADHD, has
published a new book in which he advances the theme that ADHD is a
problem of self control. This idea connects with the idea that ADHD is
a result of frontal lobe functioning deficits. The frontal lobes are
commonly described as playing a major role in goal directed activity.
As a PCT fan, this means to me that PCT should have something valuable
to say about ADHD. What follows is one possible experiment.
A person diagnosed with ADHD could be given one or more, say two, of
Bill Power's tracking tasks which has two model parameters, delay and
sensitivity. This could be done on and off medication. We could look
at, probably make a good guess about how the person's parameters change
on versus off the medication.
Then the person could be given Neurofeedback training. After which,
the person could be regiven the tracking tasks. The person, after
Neurofeedback, should show model parameters which resemble the on drug
pre-training performance more than the off drug performance. The child
could be posttested on and off the drugs. After Neurofeedback
training, there would be little or no difference between the on versus
off drug conditions.
I would repeat the above procedure with several children, say 10. I
would look for a consistent result in 100% of the children.
Reactions?
Jeffrey B. Vancouver
Department of Psychology
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
phone: 614-593-1071
fax: 614-593-0579
vancouve@oak.cats.ohiou.edu
···
at the level of PCT (i.e., the functional mechanisms) you will have to settle for "a." Perhaps you have such an explanation in mind that you have not shared with us, I would love to hear it. In terms of Bill's (971204.0307 MST) post, he said:
At 02:20 AM 12/4/1997 -0500, you wrote:
I always found it