Hyperfocusing is NOT a symptom of ADHD

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Hyperfocusing is NOT a symptom of ADHD

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfkg0VWx3rM[/youtube]

sorry I would lose my attention in 56 seconds

I don't quite understand if you mean that serious or not and if not what you want to say with that?

I don't know if it technically/officially counts as a "symptom" of ADHD, but hyperfocusing is part of ADHD for many people (including me, I think....I don't really know how much of it would be attributed to autism vs. ADHD, but I do know that my hyperfocusing was considered part of my ADHD alone before I was diagnosed with autism).

Hyperfocus in ADHD (and probably also in autism, at least sometimes) is part of having an inability to regulate your attention and internal state normally -- don't get me wrong, hyperfocus can be a useful thing sometimes, but it can also be very problematic.

Thanks for this.
I've never heard that P word he was using before - sorry, I have no idea how to spell it.
What is the difference between hyperfocus and P?

Perverersing is impairment in task swapping, the inability to swap off of something. Wikipedia has a decent quick overview.

Do you have a link?
I don't find it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseveration

(I probably spelled it wrong the first time, I get it wrong frequently)

I respect Barkley and I am glad he has done all the research and educating about ADHD that he has done.

However, he is full of it here. I think he also managed to mangle the definition of "perseveration" in the process of expressing his false dichotomy about autism, ADHD, hyperfocus, and perseveration.

My understanding of ADHD is that ADHD has both hyperfocus and perseveration. It makes a lot more sense to me that way, than saying it has only one of the two.

I also can't pay attention to the video for 56 seconds.

Hyperfocus is folk psychology term, and there is no scientific definition.

For me, it is just like the state of another folk psychology term, flow, which is being studied scientifically, and there is ackshuly project in lab about flow.

Perseveration is defined as problems task switching or set shifting, and such problems have been found in both ASD and ADHD.

I'm just thinking... but is it possible that most kids with ADHD who can hyperfocus well also have some autistic symptoms in addition?

People with ADHD do have hyper focus for example I'm very interested in rare diseases and can spend many hours reading about this subject and if the right comments and questions are said I could most likely have a very interesting conversation with a person or group of people. However, I can't stick with the subject indefinitely as soon as someone becomes long winded my attention will be lost. I also have this other problem he mentioned where I'll be stuck on one activity and stay on it when I'm supposed to be doing something else. :s

Autistic traits are not unusual in people with ADHD, and comorbidity both ways (People with ADHD also being autistic, autistic people also having ADHD) is significantly higher than in the general population.

However, that doesn't really make Barkley's statement correct. The thing about Barkley is people describe hyperfocus as a positive and Barkley pushes ADHD as a complete negative with no positive aspects. He says that if you have talents they exist in spite of ADHD, not because of them. He has very sound reasons for doing this and his intentions are good, but I do not think he is correct in doing this. I've seen the entire talk that this is a part of (it's on the CADDAC site somewhere) and it's actually really interesting for learning about ADHD. As long as you can remain focused on it. At the time I was utterly fixated on studying ADHD, but now I probably wouldn't last five minutes.

I think it's simply something that is present in both people with ADHD and autistic people, both hyperfocus and perseveration.

I agree.

I'm just wondering,but do non-autisitic ADHD people have special, narrow interests, which can lead to hyperfocus? I'm just thinking that non-autistic people don't tend to have special interests that are typically as narrow and as intense as people with autism.