Research Advances in ADHD and Technology (Synthesis Lectures on Assistive, Rehabilitative, and Health-preserving Technologies)

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most prevalent childhood psychiatric condition, with estimates of more than 5% of children affected worldwide, and has a profound public health, personal, and family impact. At the same time, a multitude of adults, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, are living, coping, and thriving while experiencing ADHD. It can cost families raising a child with ADHD as much as five times the amount of raising a child without ADHD (Zhao et al. 2019). Given the chronic and pervasive challenges associated with ADHD, innovative approaches for supporting children, adolescents, and adults have been engaged, including the use of both novel and off-the-shelf technologies. A wide variety of connected and interactive technologies can enable new and different types of sociality, education, and work, support a variety of clinical and educational interventions, and allow for the possibility of educating the general population on issues of inclusion and varying models of disability.

This book provides a comprehensive review of the historical and state-of-the-art use of technology by and for individuals with ADHD. Taking both a critical and constructive lens to this work, the book notes where great strides have been made and where there are still open questions and considerations for future work. This book provides background and lays foundation for a general understanding of both ADHD and innovative technologies in this space. The authors encourage students, researchers, and practitioners, both with and without ADHD diagnoses, to engage with this work, build upon it, and push the field further.

Dr. Franceli L. Cibrian is an Assistant Professor at the Fowler School of Engineering at Chapman University in Orange, California. She belongs to the Nacional Science System from Mexico, given by Conacyt. She did her postdoctoral training in the STAR lab of Dr. Gillian Hayes at UC Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education (CICESE) in Mexico, where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Monica Tentori. She has a background in computer system engineering and a minor in software engineering. Her research interests focus on the design, development, and evaluation of ubiquitous interactive technology to support the development of children, particularly children with special needs. She has experience in human–computer interaction and interaction design, with a specific focus on interactive surfaces and educational and therapeutic interventions for children. She has also done research stays at the Design Lab at UC San Diego under the supervision of Dr. Nadir Weibel and in the UCL Interaction Center at University College London (UCL) under the supervision of Dr. Nadia Berthouze.

Dr. Gillian R. Hayes is the Robert A. and Barbara L. Kleist Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, in the Department of Informatics in the School of Information and Computer Sciences, in the Department of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine, and in the School of Education. Dr. Hayes is also the Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate Division at the University of California, Irvine. She is an alumna of Vanderbilt University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. For 15 years, her research has focused on designing, developing, and evaluating technologies in support of vulnerable populations, including those with autism. Building on a background in computer science and a consulting career before academia, she focuses on methods for including people not traditionally represented in the design process or in research. She received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 2008 for her work on mobile technologies for children and families coping with chronic illness and neurodevelopmental disabilities. Her most recent work in this space has focused on wearables and augmented and virtual reality in collaboration with former students and postdoctoral scholars, Dr. LouAnne Boyd, Dr. Franceli Cibrian, Dr. Kathryn Ringland, and Dr. Monica Tentori. Dr. Hayes received the CHI Social Impact Award in 2019 for her work supporting community-based engaged research related to technologies for neurodevelopmental disorders.

Dr. Kimberley D. Lakes is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the University of California, Riverside. She is an alumna of University of Wisconsin, Madison and completed a clinical child psychology internship at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles and a clinical psychology postdoctoral fellowship at the Children's Hospital of Orange County and University of California, Irvine. She began her academic career with a faculty appointment in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and in 2018, left UCI and joined the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the University of California Riverside (UCR) School of Medicine. Dr. Lakes is a licensed psychologist who practices neuropsychology at the university, with a specialty in child and adolescent neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly ADHD. The central aim of her research is to contribute to scientific understanding of self-regulation and executive functions in children and adolescents. In collaboration with Dr. Hayes and Dr. Cibrian, she received funding from the Agency for Health Research and Quality and National Institutes of Health to develop and study a digital health intervention for children and adolescents with ADHD that includes intervention delivered through Apple Watches for children and a paired iPhone application for parents. She has received a number of awards from the National Institutes of Health for the impact of her work on youth who experience health disparities. Other awards for her work include the Outstanding Recent Graduate Award from the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Aspen Brain Forum Young Investigator Prize (awarded at the international Aspen Brain Forum hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences, Aspen Brain Foundation, and National Science Foundation), and a research fellowship to the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.