The ADHD label, analogue methodology, and participants' geographic location on judgments of social and attentional skills

Abstract

Two hundred fifty-nine preservice teachers at a medium-sized university in the Southwest participated in the current study. The participants were randomly assigned to a labeled condition, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or nonlabeled condition, and were presented a vignette in one of three forms: a written case study, a video clip, or a written case study with a video clip. The vignette described an elementary school aged child displaying disruptive behavior, while the video portrayed a similar aged child exhibiting disruptive behavior in the classroom. Following the presentation of the vignette, participants made judgments about the child's social skills and attentional skills by completing an examiner-made rating scale. There was a significant main effect for the label condition on judgments of attention; participants in the labeled condition made significantly more negative judgment than did those in the nonlabeled condition. There were also significant main effects for the participants' high school location and vignette treatment.

Cultural variations in mothers’ attributions: influence of child attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

“…Although the failure to detect this effect could be an issue of limited power (the effect had a probability level of p = 0.14), the effect size was small (g 2 = 0.04). These findings suggest that the impact of ADHD labeling on mothers' attributions may not be as negative as previously suggested [10,11]. Rather, results appear to be more consistent with the idea that the diagnosis of ADHD may create lower expectations for behavior, leading to less critical evaluation [12,32].…”

“…Despite the equivalence of the behaviors displayed in the videos, the presence of the ADHD diagnosis led to more negative ratings of behavior. Koonce et al [11] also found that teachers made more negative judgments about children's social and attentional skills when the children were labeled with ADHD in comparison to a nonlabeled condition. Interestingly, Cornett-Ruiz and Hendricks [12] found that when children displayed symptoms of ADHD, students and teachers had more negative first impressions of them and made more negative predictions for their future compared to when children did not display ADHD behaviors.…”

Social Appraisal of Adult ADHD

“…This possibility is supported by recent studies that have shown both teachers (D. A. Jackson & King, 2004) and college students (Hartung, Van Pelt, Armendariz, & Knight, 2006) inflate the estimated impairment of children who are described with ADHD symptoms (e.g., when only inattention is described in a vignette, raters also nominate hyperactivity as high; Hartung et al, 2006) or are directly labeled as having ADHD (Koonce et al, 2004).…”

How does psychoeducation help? A review of the effects of providing information about Tourette syndrome and attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder

“…By contrast, simply providing a label without additional information is ineffective or even unhelpful to the child given the label, particularly if teachers lack pre‐existing knowledge about the condition and/or if the child was labelled in video footage (Koonce et al . ). The impact of providing education on teachers' actual behaviours has yet to be examined fully; it may lead to increased use of classroom behavioural management strategies in some teachers (Jones & Chronis‐Tuscano ).…”

“…; Koonce et al . ). The two studies including non‐Western samples mirror the Western literature in some respects, and hence suggest the findings are applicable to different populations.…”