Listening habits and effects of background music in people with and without ADHD

Instrumental music is for when my brain needs to focus, something with no lyrics and preferably a clear beat. Synthwave works wonders as do movie/game soundtracks.

Podcasts/Audiobooks and maybe music with lyrics is when my brain needs to be tuned away and my body is doing the work, like cleaning, chores etc.

The ASRS-5, while it only has six questions, is actually a very respectable test for ADHD, often used even in clinical research. It's thoroughly tested against more comprehensive tests and the data checks out so far. It's even seeing clinical use as an early screening before going through the full diagnosis, which in adults is very involved, since diagnosis requires a determination that ADHD was present in childhood.

Source: my dad is a clinical psychologist specialising in diagnosis and treatment of ADHD . I kept seeing this pop up in papers so I asked him about it.

Around half the original pool were excluded, mostly as they quit the questionnaire partway through. It seems believable that process would result in a larger part of the pool having ADHD. It'd also help explain the disparity in musical training.

Im not sure, but if they are including subclinical cases, that doesn't seem crazy on the face of it, to me.

That is mentioned in the Strength and Limitations section.

I think that methodology isn't all that bad, because if they relied on existing diagnosis you get all the variety that is within that data. E.g. people who have been misdiagnosed, people who haven't been diagnosed because they are too functional, etc. While not ideal, it is a legitimate way of running this IMO.

That's how ADHD is diagnosed. There's not a blood test or anything, you just answer the questionnaire.

I'm the same, for the most part. I worked at a small dev shop with two coworkers. One liked to put on classical music, and the other would often play whatever the hell kind of music Pat Metheny is, and while the richness of those particular genres appeared to _stimulate_ their ability to code heads-down, it rendered me pretty much useless. My attention would glom onto the scales and arpeggios of Vivaldi's Four Seasons or onto the weird proggy time signatures of the other stuff.

However, I have had much success with black metal bands that shriek (or whatever) in a foreign language. The fullness of the sound - blast beats, distorted guitars - just really does it for me for some reason. And I don't get distracted by the vocals because I don't understand e.g. Finnish (and with bands like Horna, it's probably better that way). It makes finding that flow state much easier, and I suspect it may be working as a fidget spinner does: a certain base level of constant but predictable sensory input soothes whatever it is in my brain that gets me antsy when engaging in an activity that requires a lot of energy expenditure without proportional immediate feedback. But as soon as you up the complexity of the music past a certain point, it swings all the way the other way and makes willful concentration pretty much impossible.

Yep. It's ADHD and its weirdness with the rewards system, for sure.

There are more and more quality papers in my opinion.

That said, we are now collectively aware of more and more poor quality papers thanks to the speed of the internet and the ease with which anyone can search for subject and throw up a paper without regard for quality.

It's worth noting that the source here is a dubious "research publisher" paper mill described as:

  They’re quasi-predatory.

  Maybe not as bad as MDPI, but engaging in many of the same practices: inflation of special issues, startlingly fast review times, and from other commenters it seems they’re also ignoring reviewers so they can publish more articles and bring in the APCs.

  Like MDPI, you can find good articles in Frontiers papers - one of my go to’s for interrupted time series is in a Frontiers journal - but as time goes on and knowledge of their shadiness spreads, you’ll be better served not having your name associated with them.

here in r/AskAcademia : https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/179bnvv/how_ar...

Literally the first paragraph:

"The results also reveal a difference in the proportion of individuals preferring stimulating music between the groups: ADHD-screened individuals report significantly more frequent listening to stimulating music, regardless of the activity type (more or less cognitive). Other aspects of music listening are common to both groups."

> ADHD is just a buzzword to fish attention.

And you’re just now telling me this? I’ve been struggling with it for 40 years - and the last thing I want is attention, especially in that way.