Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is a brain disorder that interferes with children’s concentration, attention, self-esteem, and self-control. The children have trouble staying focused, being organized, thinking before acting, and making realistic plans. They develop an aggressive, socially inept, and defiant attitude, therefore, making it difficult to undertake their daily chores. Children with ADD face difficulty adapting to changing situations and become noisy and fidgety when exposed to unfamiliar situations (Brown, Reichel & Quinlan, 2012, p.60). The disorder affects about 10% of children in America and is easily identifiable in the first six years of a child. Various social psychologists such as Mead have made several contributions that may help in understanding and explaining ADD in children.
Social scientific thinking developed ideas that related the human mind and made major contributions to the study of the brain and cognitive development. Cognitive understanding refers to mind abilities that include thinking, sorting, deliberating, and reorganizing. Mead made major contributions to this school of thought by suggesting that the human mind can only develop in a human way if an individual interacted with other human beings. He suggested stages of personality development that a person goes through from childhood to adulthood (Brown, Reichel & Quinlan, 2012, p.61). Throughout these stages, an individual absorbs information from the environment, and that sets behavior expectations and demands certain behavioral standards. According to Mead, personality develops in stages: the egocentric stage, play stage, and game stage. He also developed the concept of symbolic interactions. People develop a common meaning for certain gestures so that there is effective communication between them. His study of mind, self, and society explored the development of mind and self from communication interactions with other people. Emergence of mind relies on interaction with the social environment, and there is no mind without language since the sole focus is on language that facilitates communication.
Learning disability is a common element among children with ADD since they have difficulty mastering language, basic reading, writing, and essential academic skills. This is due to interference with concentration and attention, especially in a class setting. According to Mead, language is the most important element in the development of the mind. Language forms the basis of communication as it facilitates symbolic interactivity, therefore, allowing passage of information from one individual to the other. Children with ADD have trouble developing and grasping language from their first stage of personality development (Quinlan & Brown, 2003, p.146). This hinders social interaction with their peers who grasp information at a fast rate hence experience cognitive development. Affected children lag behind socially and academically since over time, the cognitive difference between the children becomes visible. Their performance falls below the expected level for children of their age and intelligence level since their mind fails to develop. Deficiency of language knowledge affects the entire development process of children with ADD since it affects the entire development of mind and self. The children lack access to information on the society’s expectations in terms of behavior hence end up behaving in socially unacceptable ways. They fail to identify how everyone in the society behaves to use it as a tool for shaping their own behavior. Missing the normal stages of development robs these children a chance to develop their cognitive ability. Difficulty in the use of language isolates them from their peers, which further delays their development process.
In biological assessment, ADD is a brain deficiency meaning it is not just a behavioral issue but one that emerges from biological elements. They have reduced activity in the brain regions involved with visual attention and the working memory. The processing of visual attention information is considerably slow in the brains of children with ADD. This problem, therefore, emerges from the brain and is not merely an issue of social interaction with other children. This means that even with a healthy social system, the child still faces slow cognitive development. The slow cognitive development affects the other aspects of the child’s life particularly the social life. Children without the disorder grasp information at a faster rate and their brain activity is faster than that of children with ADD (Brown, Reichel & Quinlan, 2011, p.82). At a particular age, the minds of the two types of children are different, and they cannot interact comfortably. This affects the social development of the child and eventually the child can only interact with younger children with a similar mind capacity as them. Evidently, biological factors play a significant role in the cognitive development of children with ADD.
In conclusion, Attention Deficit Disorder has influence from both the biological and social factors, which affect the cognitive development of children. Mead’s theory assists in understanding the mind and its development in relation to social interactions (Brown, Reichel & Quinlan, 2011, p.80). It helps understand ADD in children through suggestions that the mind only develops by interacting with others, and that language is the key to this development. The inability of these children to master language affects their mind development due to interference with their social lives. Biological factors also contribute to the slow mind development of children with ADD due to its effect on attentiveness and concentration of the children hence slow learning of language and a lacking social life.
References
Brown T. E., Reichel P. C., Quinlan D. M. (2011). Extended Time Improves Reading Comprehension Test Scores In Adolescents With ADHD. Open Journal Of Psychiatry. 1: 79-87.
Brown T. E., Reichel P. C., Quinlan D. M. (2012). Executive Function Impairments in High IQ Children and Adolescents with ADHD. Open Journal Of Psychiatry. 56-65.
Quinlan D., Brown T. E. (2003). Assessment of Short-Term Verbal Memory Impairments in Adolescents and Adults with ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders. Vol 6: Pp 143-152.
