Hi all,
first of all can I say what a terrific online parent support site this is. I live in Australia and we have very few parent discussion boards for parents of ADHD children.
I am a psychology student at Central Queensland University (college? in the US)in Australia and I am looking for participants for my research. The aim of my research is to examine emotional reactivity (emotionality) in children, and I am comparing differences in children who are diagnosed with either ADD/ADHD and children who are diagnosed with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
High emotional reactivity can occur when a child is faced with complex, changing, novel or unexpected situations. Usually, as time passes, and the individual is used to the change in circumstances, levels of emotionality drop back to normal levels. Some children however take longer to return to this baseline, and high emotional reactivity (both positive and negative) may be maintained for an extended period. While Autistic Spectrum Disorders and Attention Deficit Disorders each have defining criteria as specified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), high emotional reactivity has been observed in both groups. This research will determine if there are any significant differences between the two groups, and may have implications for management of such children in a school setting and so forth.