The Mirror of ERISED

The article I read was "Grappling with the medicated self: The case of ADHD College Students," by Meika Loe and Leigh Cuttino.

The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of ADHD medication on the concept of self among college students diagnosed with ADHD. The study was conducted by interview, during which the interviewer asked questions about "experiences with diagnosis and treatment for ADHD, as well as on their educational background and understanding of success" (Loe & Cuttino, 2008, p. 305). Transcripts of tape-recorded sessions were coded for "symbols and themes" (Loe & Cuttino, 2008, p. 305). Common themes included discussing "'authenticity'" of a sense of self without medication and "'academic performance'" (Loe & Cuttino, 2008, p. 306). The researchers discuss their concern with a certain discrepancy between a student's sense of self while under the influence of medication and while not under that influence.

The interviews also touch on the subject of self dosing, and the range of dosing behaviors described by the students. Some students take the medication on a very consistent basis, others use the medication only when they feel they need it, suggesting a dual sense of self. Several students who were interviewed described a desire to cease medication after college and pursue a career that accentuated their behavior without medication, such as an Emergency Room Doctor.

With regard to academic performance, several students described a pressure by society to perform at an academic level only achievable for them with the help of medication. A very interesting statement from the discussion section of the article suggests that "academic rewards aside, accepting the ADHD identity usually requires acknowledging deficiency or limitation and managing a medicated identity" (Loe & Cuttino, 2008, p. 319). The article projects questions about the success of these students after they drop this medicated identity and want to join the workforce.

The main idea that I came away with from this article was that students with ADHD are struggling for control in an academic rat race and are adapting in varying ways. The means of adaptation I find most interesting is the plan to use medication to optimize academic performance, but ceasing medication upon graduation and finding a job that utilizes the positive characteristics of ADHD. It made a lot of sense to me to harvest one student's "overly ambitious" personality and desire "to do a billion things at once" to channel her skills into the career of ER doctor (Loe & Cuttino, 2008, p. 317). It seems unfortunate that she has to compromise these skills to succeed in the college that is supposed to prepare her for this career, but I like the idea of channeling the unique characteristics of ADHD instead of suppressing them. I understand that this may not be feasible for severe cases of ADHD, but it encourages me to pursue treatments other than medication for ADHD and to look into the classrooms and "academic ethic" that Loe and Cuttino suggest our society has created. If the results of future studies, perhaps including my comp, could suggest means of altering the educational system to channel the skills of ADHD students to help them learn instead of suppressing their "symptoms" with medication and labeling them with a diagnosis that suggests society finds them deficient, I would feel I had succeeded in helping the growing population of students with ADHD struggling to come to terms with a medicated self.

This article relates to my ideas for a comp project because if I am not able to secure a sample of children for my experiment, my back-up plan is to conduct the experiment with college students, so I am also interested in the effects of ADHD medication on my peers. This particular study is relevant because it was conducted using a sample of students in an environment very similar to that of Allegheny College. The school was a "selective private liberal arts college in the Northeast" (Loe & Cuttino, 2008, p. 305). This suggests that if I were to conduct a study using Allegheny students, this would be a very important source of information to base my experiment on.

I found this article on the PsycINFO database and had to order it from the Illiad service, but the abstract can be found here, or by logging in to the database and searching for the article's title.

Loe, M., & Cuttino, L. (2008). Grappling with the medicated self: The case of ADHD college students. Symbolic Interaction, 31(3), 303-323. Retrieved February 24, 2009, from PsycINFO database.

The study I read for my March entry of Exploring the Field was by Silverstein and Allison (1994), "The comparative efficacy of antecedent exercise and methylphenidate: a single-case randomized trial." This was especially interesting to me because the participant was a preschool child and if I had the ability to administer medication or to select a sample of medicated children, I would be especially interested in furthering this exact study with a much larger sample of children in a typical rather than special education classroom. This study is dated by comparison to much of the other research I have come across on this subject and discourages my hypothesis that antecedent exercise will reduce disruptive behavior, but is very important because (as it admits) it is one of very few studies that explore this topic. It also provides a methodology that would be easy to replicate without medication, and suggests a measure of hyperactivity that I might consider for my own project.

The participant was a 3-year-old African American boy who had been diagnosed with ADHD according to the DSM-III. The participant received all three conditions of 10mg of methylphenidate once a day plus attention placebo, antecedent exercise, which entailed 20 minutes of jogging, plus medication placebo, and the attention placebo plus medication placebo condition. Researchers describe the lasting effects of the medication as 4 hour after administration and the rigorous exercise as 24 hours, so the procedures for the conditions were alternated each day. The Conners' Abbreviated Symptom Questionnaire was used to measure hyperactive behavior. The results indicated that antecedent exercise was associated with the most hyperactivity, the placebo with less, and the medication with the least. Researchers suggest the implication of research of this topic will become even more important as children are diagnosed with ADHD at younger ages, specifically, during preschool. The perspective of this study seems to indicate that more treatments need to be developed because there are more preschool children that will be diagnosed and need this treatment, which is slightly counter to the idea of many of my other studies. Other studies suggest that behavior considered symptoms of ADHD in elementary school children are normal in preschool children because they have not yet physically developed the brain area that controls impulses so it is questionable to diagnose preschool children with a disorder.

I acquired this article through the Illiad service, but its abstract may be found in the PsycINFO database.

In the eighth and final chapter of his book, txtng: the gr8 db8, David Crystal gives the reader an array of examples of criticism of and support for (mostly criticism) text messaging from modern society. According to him, people from all over and from all different fields have pointed their prophetic finger at the mobile phone, blaming it and its texting functions for many of the world's linguistic woes. Even after one manages to get through Crystal's obviously and heavily biased arguments, though, the reader sees him more or less effectively refute all of these accusations with realitive ease and simplicity. There is one point that he brought up, however, that at first just piqued my interest, but then began to absorb more and more of my attention and thought.

Crystal had a number of really interesting thoughts in Chapters 7 and 8 of Txtng: the gr8 db8, one even relating to my interest in texting in other languages. However, I found that the relationship between texting and development of formal language skills in adolescence caught my attention.

Crystal suggests, as we also discussed in class, that it takes a firm grasp on the formal conventions of a language to be able to play with it in text. He lends evidence to this idea by describing recent studies on the effects of texting on language skills of adolescents. Crystal quotes recent studies of reading and vocabulary ability of pre-teen students as finding, "that the younger the children when they received their first phone, the higher their scores." I found this quote particularly intriguing because my gut reaction to this statement was that it didn't seem right. I would have thought that it would have been more beneficial to have had a longer time to develop conventional formal language skills before being exposed to a medium with which to play with the language. However, Crystal is suggesting that the ability to play with the language suggests that these students are adept at language skills in the first place and this is evidenced by their texting behaviors. He also suggests that more research should be done with students of varying aptitude levels to see if these results are the same with other students.

Was it the extra practice and the intellectually stimulating task of playing with language that enhanced these students' language skills, and if so, would this be beneficial to students of all aptitude levels? Should we be encouraging younger and younger students, or students struggling with language skills to text more?

Crystal suggests that as long as teachers, parents, and researchers can teach children the difference between when it is appropriate to use texting language and when it is not, every opportunity to write and communicate is beneficial to the development of formal language skills, especially in the ability to summarize and be concise. However, he does describe a concern with the structure of messages in texts as being simple and short statements and that this method of communication impedes the ability to make detailed descriptions and explanations in formal writing. Which should be valued more in formal writing, conciseness or detail? Technically it depends on the style and field of writing, but in general, are we sacrificing the development of eloquence for effective summary by learning texting as a variety of language, and if so, is this a good thing?

Every chapter of David Crystal’s txtng the gr8 db8 is packed with tons of information presenting both sides of the “gr8 db8” over txtng. Personally, I enjoy the fact that Crystal seems to be in favor of texting. The first thing that stuck out to me in Chapter 7 was his introduction of how different languages are used in texting and the adaptations they must make. The languages that have been around for practically forever HAVE to adapt to technology. This point was super cool to me simply because I am so in favor of technology. He is setting the stage to show us that English is not the only language adapting on account of advances in technology and he follows this point the whole way through to the end of the book. The main focus, however, of Chapter 7 is the similarities (and differences) that occur in text messaging among different languages.

My past two Exploring the Field entries have focused mostly on the study of grammar in written communication and the effects that grammaticality has on the impressions formed by the readers of the author. During my research, though, I came across several pieces of research that had little or nothing to do with grammar but were still quite relevant to the topic I'm currently pursuing for my senior comp. One such study was conducted by N. Epley and J. Kruger and was published in 2005, and was entitled When what you type isn't what they read: The perseverance of stereotypes and expectancies over e-mail. I thought I'd give an article that wasn't related to grammar mechanics a chance to shine on my blog.

I have been working really hard on trying to figure out how to fit all of my information together and narrow down my topic. I never realized how difficult it is to be "picky" with which journal entries will be good enough and which ones will not be good enough with writing. Also a really difficult thing has kind of been figuring out how to use the journal searches to find exactly what I’ve been looking for. I found a great paper that has helped a lot in my introduction it is by Nicole B. Ellison and Yuehua Wu. The paper is entitled, Blogging in the Classroom: A Preliminary Exploration of Student Attitudes and Impact on Comprehension. This paper has really helped me in a way figure out which direction I want to go with my project and has given me more hope--There are articles out there for me!! :-)