Adults With ADHD, Essay Example

Psychology: Articles Critique

Titles of the two articles to be compared and contrasted are, ‘Can’t Control Yourself? Monitor Those Bad habits’ by Jeffrey Quinn, Anthony Pasceer, Wendy Wood, and David Neal. The next one is, ‘Constraints on information processing capacity in adults with ADHD’ by Roberts, Millch and Fillmore.

Comparing/ Contrasting of Articles

The first article relates to a research in psychology of bad habits and how one can take control of them. Researchers have contended that changing bad habits requires self-control strategies. They further explain‘the slow-to change memory’ phenomenon. Assumptions are thathabits are inherent within memory and do not relinquish their position easily.Further it was revealed that bad habits are resistant to reinterpretation(Quinn et.al,2010).

These researchers continue to contend thatsuccessful habit control means suppressing responses which occur froma memory impulse.  With reference to two supporting episode-sampling diary studies the researchers confirmed that responses to stimulations such as temptations can be controlled spontaneously through vigilance. However, habits are different because they emerge from memory where information is stored after being recorded (Quinn et.al, 2010).

‘Constraints on information processing capacity in adults with attention -deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)’ relates a study whereby researchers assessed ‘reduced capacity of working memory and response selection mechanisms’ (Roberts et.al, 2012). Thirty eight young adults affected with ADHD were compared thirty three normal subjects(Roberts et.al, 2012).

Psychological refractory period [PRP] task was used for evaluating working mental capacity in the two groups.Results revealed that mental capacity declined when memory load increased. According to researchers it is highly suggestive that dissociations between working memory and response selection capacities may affect understanding dysfunctions in adults afflicted with the disease (Roberts et.al, 2012).

Both articles discussed memory function. They are reports of studies conducted on memory capacity to hold information and reproduce it when needed.Precisely, they offer current evidence based data regarding bad habits memory, which can occur in anyone at any age and attention-deficit hyperactive memory in adults. Also both studies were conducted as experiments with control groups to emphasize findings.

However, the articles differ in a number of aspects; first in the methodology. Even though they were both experiments the first article applied evidence from a two episode-sampling dairy study. In the second instance researchers conducted case study experiments utilizing a control group. A specific sample size was selected from this population and revealed to the reader.

There was no specific sampling method outlined in the first article, but it can be suggested that this might have been a literature review of other studies and the researchers did not conduct these investigations themselves as in the second instance. Besides, in article two researchers stated their purpose and offered clear directions of the study within the abstract, which was significantly omitted from article 1.

Conclusion

Conclusions emerging from both studies although related to memory also differed, which could be reconciled since the aims were different. Bad habit memory had no attention deficit issues as inADHD conditions because it does not forget what has been stored in the subconscious portion of mind. Therefore, it requires effort to remove. The paradox with attention deficit shows that the recording portion of the brain malfunctions by not processing data in response to selection capacities.  My speculation is that maybe attention-deficit in adults could just be another bad habit if in-depth research is conducted into understanding this dysfunction

References

Roberts, W. Milich, R., &Fillmore.(2012).Constraints on information processing capacity in adults with ADHD. Neuropsychology. 26(6), 695-703

Quinn, J. Pasceer, A. Wood, W., & Neal, D. (2010).  Can’t Control Yourself? Monitor those bad habits.Personal and social Psychology Bulletin.36(4); 499-511