Attention Deficit Disorder

WHAT IS ADD? DIAGNOSING ADD WHAT ADD Is NOT WHAT'S IN A NAME? HOW THE ADD MIND WORKS RESULTS OF ANALOG VS. DIGITAL THINKING TYPES OF ADD

HOW THE ADD MIND WORKS

One of the most interesting aspects of the ADD mind has to do with how information is processed-how thinking takes place. There are two primary ways in which brains process information: the digital way and the analog way.

Digital refers to individual, discreet bundles of information. For example, if you have a digital clock, it reads one and only one time. On a digital clock it is either 9:27 A.M. or 9:28 A.M. You wouldn't look at a digital clock and say, It looks like it's about 9:27. It either is or it isn't. However, you cannot tell by looking at the clock whether it's just turned 9:27 or is almost ready to turn 9:28.
On an analog clock (the "old-fashioned" kind with the hour and minute hands), there's more clarity and more room for generalization. When the digital clock says 9:27, you might look at the analog clock and realize that it is midway between 9:27 and 9:28. On the other hand, you may choose to estimate the gen¬eral time saying, it's nearly half past the hour of 9:00. There's more flexibility with the analog clock.

At one time digital and analog processing in the brain were related to the terms "left brain" and "right brain." However, that explanation has been consid¬ered overly simplistic. It indicated that each individual, or any type of activity, used either a digital or analog process. In reality, they both exist on a continuum of information-processing styles. While digital and analog processing might be at opposite ends of that spectrum, the middle contains infinite combinations.

As soon as you learn language, accept boundaries, and live within constraints, you do so primarily through the development of the symbolic and digital system. Current methods of socialization and education are responsible for programming the brain to function within a symbolic and structured world. This form of train¬ing better fits the person who processes information digitally.

Most people who are ADD tend to primarily be analog processors rather than digital processors of information. The culture in which we live not only favors people who are digital processors but believes that digital processing is superior to analog processing. Therefore, the way people who are ADD think and work is considered inferior. Thus the "diagnosis" -Attention Deficit Disorder.

The analog thinking process tends to be fluid, spatial, fluctuating, constantly changing with kaleidoscopic images and shifting forms. If your mind works this way, you are likely to notice backgrounds, moods, and new patterns rather than details. The feeling tones that surround even daily living are musical and poetic to analog processors. Emotions, visions, dreams, magic, novelty, and paradoxes provide the resources from which you draw to paint the experiences of your life. Analogies run rampant as a means with which to describe what you are trying to define or create. And the analog brain is tuned to survival in a natural environ¬ment. This translates into having "street smarts."

Analog thinking is present to a large degree in artistic expression, the ability to see the big picture and project expansively into the future. New leaps of imagi¬nation, the skill of sensing intricate feeling tones within your situation, along with subtlety of expression, are also a part of analog processing. The world is viewed in terms of a whole gestaltlike chunk, rather than in terms of details. Boundaries observed or created by digital thinkers are irrelevant or unimportant to analog thinkers, whose thrust of interest is in finding new and innovative ways of doing or seeing things or who see patterns that cross boundaries.

The digital processing system focuses on serial step-by-step sequences, rigid categories that differentiate detail, with considerable regulation to each single tick of the clock and each step taken. Digital thinking dominates speech, rea¬soning, sequential analysis, rational, logical, and abstract thinking.

Symbolic language that stands for-something or codes information item-for¬item is digital. No matter what type of clock you're using, time is measured in our culture in a digital manner rather than by moon cycles or seasons of the year. The accepted way to organize details and manage large projects tends to be reliant on the digital way of doing and maintaining things.

People, of course, do not fall neatly into one category or another, digital or analog. Some people will be evenly balanced between. Others, like myself, are almost exclusively analog processors and have very few natural digital skills. To be sure, I've learned some digital skills over the years. I had to in order to survive my education and in the work place. But none of it came naturally, and it was very, very hard for me to learn those skills. Keeping them up still requires my con¬centrated effort. When I'm tired, for example, the first thing that goes is any abil¬ity to organize systematically, including keeping track of time. But I can always see the big picture and create wonderful new castles in the sky, whether I'm tired or not.