Children suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may be ignoring visual information to their left and being diagnosed mistakenly as having dyslexia, according to new research by Dr Tom Manly and colleagues at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge and published in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Brain and Cognition.
The latest of three recent papers on the subject, published today, shows that this ‘left neglect’ phenomenon is more widespread in children than previously thought.
The research, conducted by Dr Manly and colleagues Dr Veronika Dobler and Melanie George, showed that children with ADHD might simply stop noticing things to their left, particularly when they are doing boring or unstimulating tasks. The phenomenon of ‘left neglect’ is well-known in adults who have suffered right-sided brain injury, who can act as if half the world has simply disappeared. Some children with ADHD, who had no brain damage and perfectly normal intelligence, showed ‘left neglect’ quite as severe as that seen in some adults with substantial damage to the right side of the brain. Remarkably, the studies show that most children’s awareness of things to their left - but not their right – significantly declines if they are asked to perform a boring task for about 40 minutes.