Question

Attention deficit disorder (ADD) is a syndrome in which a personhas difficulty focusing sustained attention on a task for asignificant amount of time. In some cases this is accompanied byhyperactivity as well. It is currently being diagnosed at anall-time high. Between 1989 and 1996, youth visits for ADDincreased 90%, from 1.9% of total physician visits to 3.6%.
Now a psychiatrist, Dr. Edward Hallowell is making a newdistinction. He has described a similar set of characteristics in alarge number of patients that he terms Attention Deficit Trait(ADT). It looks a lot like ADD in its day to day manifestation, butunlike ADD, ADT symptoms lessen when the sufferer goes on vacationor into a decreased sensory input setting for an extended timeperiod (on the order of days or weeks). In such a long-term placidsituation, the ADD sufferer's problems continue unabated.
We will pretend that you have the general set of symptoms describedabove. Ahh, but which of the two syndromes are causing yoursymptoms: the disorder (ADD) or the trait (ADT)? We’ll approachyour problem using scientific methodology—developing a question, ahypothesis, an experiment, and a control for the experiment.
Let’s share this assignment. I will supply both the initialquestion and the experiment we’ll perform on you. Your job is tostate the hypothesis and to design the most important and mostbasic control for this experiment:
Your Question: What's my problem? Is it ADD or is it ADT?
(1)Your Hypothesis: state your hypothesis based directly on theabove question.
Your Experiment: Keeping your same diet, sleep habits, and basicactivity level, you will be sent on a two week vacation to theBahama Islands where you will be given only a beach to walk andyour favorite friend to talk to, following which you will be askedto read and memorize 10 sequential definitions from a standarddictionary in 30 minutes’ time.