Assignment 2 for Philosophy and Psychology year 2 - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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Course
Philosophy & psychology
Institution
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
This is my second assignment for this course in which I got a 10. Here is the complete and submitted version from which you can take inspiration and compare your progress to:)
From the Hoogman et al. findings to the public — what went wrong?
The study by Hoogman et al. (2017) investigated the differences in brain volume between indivi-
duals with ADHD and a control group. The study claimed that people with ADHD have smaller
brains and that this effect was not due to medications. The study also claimed that its purpose was
to destigmatize the general idea of ADHD being an adjective for children with difficult tempera-
ments and that the cause for such difficulty lies in parenting. However, the study fails to accomplish
that. For starters, the reported effect sizes regarding the volume of certain brain areas were consi-
stently small. For example, Cohen’s d effect size reported for the nucleus accumbens in children
under the age of 15 was .19. This, in terms of percentage, translates into around 58% of children
with ADHD having a below-average accumbens compared to the control group. That is, a slightly
higher percentage of ADHD children is located in the lower half of the scale, and a slightly higher
percentage of non-ADHD children in the upper half of the accumbens measurements. However, the
researchers made it appear as if a considerable difference had been found. Moreover, the Hoogman
et al. (2017) study presented an issue with the omission of valuable data related to IQ scores. The
findings showed that children with ADHD scored higher compared to the control group. The results,
however, are relegated to an appendix which to access is only granted upon request following the
purchase of the paper. This is not only an issue with regards to researchers’ duty of reporting results
, that contradict their claim, but it is also detrimental to the perception of children with ADHD. This
omission, in fact, only encourages the stigma that the study had proposed to eliminate.
What is neurodiversity?
Neurodiversity is the idea that certain neurological differences that are considered as pathological
conditions should be regarded simply as a variation of the human genome. This model tries to in-
troduce the concept of a spectrum across which neurological variations unfold and to challenge the
idea of what is generally accepted and what is not (Robison, 2013). The aim is to relieve conditions
such as Autism or ADHD from the negative connotation of diseases that need to be cured, without
underestimating the impact that these diverse conditions have on individuals with the conditions.
The neurodiversity model’s core principle is not only to alleviate the impairments but to also beco-
me respectful of them and enhance the individuality of people with diversity. Finally, it aims at re-
ducing the stigma and including these differences into society rather than suppress them (Bailin,
2019).
High IQ scores in ADHD cohort from a neurodiversity perspective:
This approach encourages people to view neurodiversity as a contributing asset to society that
should be nourished rather than repressed. An example of this is given by the findings of IQ scores
in children with ADHD in the Hoogman et al. (2017) study. Results showed that children in the
ADHD cohort presented higher intelligence quotients compared to the control group. This finding
supports the idea that neurodiversity represents a different set of abilities, including advantages, that
could also be beneficial to society. Nevertheless, high levels of intelligence are sometimes not
enough to alleviate the struggles of this neurodevelopmental condition as it is still associated with a
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