Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD - ADHD) is a condition that can affect all ages, and can occur with and with out hyperactivity. In adults the hyperactivity often turns into a sense of restlessness. However, the ongoing symptoms can lead to debilitating symptoms of depression and anxiety which when treated do not fully going away or continue to recur because of an underlying ADD.

Therefore, it is very important for ADD to be objectively identified and it is never too late to investigate. Many individuals with ADD will have areas of strengths that help them compensate for their deficits. However, this often leads to these individuals being undetected and undiagnosed until a point where they reach their limit or their ceiling and life starts to become extremely difficult. This can occur in late childhood, adolescence, early adulthood or even late adulthood.

Our brain function, brain wave, and cognitive assessment can identify the existence of an attention deficit disorder and the type of ADD which exists (Rowe and Hermens, 2006). Identifying the sub category of ADD can be crucial to obtaining the correct form of treatment, whether that be via medication, psychology or neurotherapy (Rowe et al., 2007).

	Read more about our assessment of children and adolescents.
	Read and find out more about our treatment options for ADHD .
	Read some of our case examples on ADHD.
	Look at some of our scientific publications on ADHD.
	Read about our metacognitive and internal language program for ADHD.

Note that it is not enough to rely on the popular continuous performance tests (CPTs) such as the Test of Variable Attention (TOVA) or Conners CPT (Corkum & Siegel, 1993; Riccio et al., 2001; Seifert et al., 2003). The results from CPTs seem encouraging but at a clinical cut off of > 2 SD, the sensitivity of these tests falls down to approximately 60 % (Forbes, 1998). This means that a lot of ADHD children are not identified and if a more conservative cut-off of > -1.5 SD is used then more are identified but there is also a very high number of normal children that are identified as having ADHD (Greenhill et al., 2002; Grodzinsky & Barkley, 1999).

The results indicate that no single instrument can be used to identify the comprehensive range of cognitive abnormalities that can occur in ADHD (Doyle et al., 2000; Frazier et al., 2004). The use of neuropsychological test batteries which combine multiple cognitive tests tapping into different domains of cognitive function are considered better and have provided much more encouraging results (Doyle et al., 2000; Frazier et al., 2004; Muir-Broaddus et al., 2002; Perugini et al., 2000; Pineda et al., 1999). Authors have also considered that a comprehensive neuropsychological battery is needed to advance ADHD research (Sergeant et al., 2003).

An example of the utility of the test battery approach has been illustrated by Pineda et al. (1999) who found that they could correctly classify 85.5% of a sample of 62 ADHD and 62 control subjects using 10 neuropsychological variables. Further sensitivity and specificity is obtained by using brain function (neurophysiological) and neuropsychological measures (Hermens et al., 2006). More importantly, the brain function measures are the only way to identify the cause of the neuropsychological deficit, and it is this information that is crucial for determining the most optimal treatment approach (Rowe & Hermens, 2006).

References

Corkum, PV and Siegel, LS (1993). Is the Continuous Performance Task a valuable research tool for use with children with Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder? Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines , 34 (7), 1217-1239.

Doyle, AE, Biederman, J, and Seidman, L (2000). Diagnostic efficiency of neuropsychological test scores for discriminating boys with and without attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology , 68 (3), 477-488.

Frazier, TW, Demaree, HA, and Youngstrom, EA (2004). Meta-Analysis of Intellectual and Neuropsychological Test Performance in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Neuropsychology , 18 (3), 543-555.

Greenhill, LL, Pliszka, S, Dulcan, MK, Bernet, W, Arnold, V, Beitchman, J, Benson, RS, Bukstein, O, Kinlan, J, McClellan, J, Rue, D, Shaw, JA, Stock, S, and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2002). Practice parameter for the use of stimulant medications in the treatment of children, adolescents, and adults. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry , 41 (2 Suppl), 26S-49S.

Grodzinsky, GM and Barkley, RA (1999). Predictive power of frontal lobe tests in the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The Clinical Neuropsychologist , 13 (1), 12-21.

Hermens, DF, Rowe, DL, Gordon, E, and Williams, LM (2006). Integrative neuroscience approach to predict ADHD stimulant response. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics , 6 (5), 753-763.

Muir-Broaddus, JE, Rosenstein, LD, Medina, DE, and Soderberg, C (2002). Neuropsychological test performance of children with ADHD relative to test norms and parent behavioral ratings. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology , 17 (7), 671-689.

Perugini, EM, Harvey, EA, Lovejoy, DW, Sandstrom, K, and Webb, AH (2000). The predictive power of combined neuropsychological measures for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children. Child Neuropsychology , 6 (2), 101-114.

Pineda, D, Ardila, A, and Rosselli, M (1999). Neuropsychological and behavioral assessment of ADHD in seven- to twelve-year-old children: A discriminant analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities , 32 (2), 159-173.

Riccio, CA, Waldrop, JJ, Reynolds, CR, and Lowe, P (2001). Effects of stimulants on the continuous performance test (CPT): implications for CPT use and interpretation. Journal of Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences , 13 (3), 326-335.

Rowe, DL and Hermens, DF (2006). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: neurophysiology, information processing, arousal and drug development. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 6(11), 1721-1734.

Rowe, DL, Hermens, DF, Kohn, M, Clarke, S, and Gordon, E (2006). Neuropsychological subtypes of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Australian Journal of Psychology, 58(suppl), 230-231

Seifert, J, Scheuerpflug, P, Zillessen, KE, Fallgatter, A, and Warnke, A (2003). Electrophysiological investigation of the effectiveness of methylphenidate in children with and without ADHD. Journal of Neural Transmission , 110 (7), 821-829.