Mediated Online Awareness Among Adolescents With and Without ADHD: Using the Occupational Performance Experience Analysis (OPEA).
Orit Fisher, Itai Berger, Ephraim S Grossman and 1 others
PMID 36793250WHAT IT FOUND
Adolescents with ADHD gave shorter, less coherent descriptions of recent tasks than peers without ADHD.
A brief guided questioning session improved the time-ordering and coherence of their descriptions, but did not change the main actions they reported.
Key findings
01Adolescents with ADHD provided descriptions of occupational experiences that were less coherent and lacked temporal context compared to controls, with large effect sizes.
02After a brief mediation redirecting attention to task demands, adolescents with ADHD significantly improved their description of temporal context and coherence.
03The mediation did not significantly change the main actions described by adolescents with ADHD.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional and did not include a control group that received the mediation, so it is unclear if the improvement in the ADHD group was due to the specific mediation or simply repeating the task. The sample was not representative of all adolescents with ADHD; all participants were in regular education and had parents with high levels of education. There was no post-test measure of actual occupational performance or self-management, so it is unknown if improved verbal coherence translates to better daily function. Attrition was high in the control group for the second assessment (54% missing), preventing a direct comparison of the mediation effect between groups. The groups were not equivalent in size (46 vs. 24).
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the improved coherence after mediation as evidence that this technique will improve the adolescent's actual daily occupational performance or self-management skills. The study only measured the quality of their verbal description, not their functional outcomes.