More Sniffles

• ADHD, Nintendo, and Evolutionary Psychology (1) by Jim Brody, 2/26/97
  
  

The following could indicate difficulty with filtering extraneous, high frequency, sounds. The reactions are exaggerated and can easily be rephrased in a Likert or APT structure. (1, 2)

Hits kid with sniffles

Dad, learning the homework assignment, hits kid who fidgets while waiting.

Yells at kid who cracks knuckles

Annoyed by radio static; fussy about exact tuning of the audio, becomes a danger in traffic.

Seizure elicited by finger nails dragging on a chalkboard

Rattling change in the car ashtray draws attention away from traffic

Noisy wiper blades

Spays cats immediately

Yells at wife who talks in background during TV

Homicidal in films when the people behind are chattering

Turns up TV volume to drown out the rest of the house

Has to kill houseflies (not for fear of disease or reluctance to share food)

Enraged by crying babies

It's difficult to label this feature as a disability or an adaptation. It could be a residual of early ear infections or some other failure of inhibition or attention. I sense (no data) that these phenomena are understudied (?) and perhaps a widely distributed, subtle factor in many household disputes. (3)

NOTES:

1) APT ... once stood for "Assessment/Program Team" and was a training manual for use with severely/profoundly mentally retarded clients. The progress measure was not a frequency count, rather a monitoring of the Degree of Assistance Needed for Task Completion. The steps were Unable to complete task with any degree of help, Completes task with physical guidance, Completes task with physical prompt, Completes task with verbal prompt, Completes task only with situational cues. In the above case, "Requires physical restraint to impede assault"

2) Psychology invested heavily in frequency measures and Likert Scales while ignoring other possibilities. Burgess Shale Effect?

3) I certainly have many of the above features and, with awareness, self-monitor rather than igniting when I encounter high frequency distractors. On the other hand, I can reliably concentrate better on reading and editing tasks when sitting in a mall or public area than I can in a quiet room. The disruptive effect seems to be elicited by high frequency sounds.

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