Date: Oct 30, 2019 3:00pm-4:30pm
Location: Dunton Tower: Room 2203
Speaker: Sabrina De Lonardo
Title: ADHD Symptoms, Academic Anxiety, and Mathematics
Abstract:
ADHD is a lifelong disorder that poses academic challenges for individuals in post-secondary education. ADHD also tends to co-occur with anxiety, especially anxiety around academic activities, such as studying and test-taking. Many of the behaviours that are challenges for people with ADHD diagnoses, such as avoiding difficult tasks, difficulty with organization, and difficulty with sustaining attention on boring or repetitive tasks, may also interfere with success in university. Accordingly, the prevalence of ADHD symptoms may be related to academic difficulties for university students regardless of whether they have ever received a diagnosis of ADHD.
In the first half of this talk, I will discuss the findings of my research, which has focused on the links among ADHD symptoms, academic anxiety/confidence, and mathematics performance. To date, there is very little research on how ADHD or ADHD symptoms are linked to math performance. I propose an indirect link in which the negative relation between ADHD symptoms and math performance is mediated by academic anxiety/confidence. In the second half of this talk, I will discuss my plans for further research in this area, aimed at understanding the underlying cognitive factors that contribute to the ADHD-math relationship.