Associate Professor of Psychology Tara McKee presented a poster at the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston on May 26. The poster, titled “Socio-Emotional and Academic Correlates of ADHD Symptomatology Across Four Years of College,” was co-authored with Kyndal Burdin ’18 and Isabel O’Malley ’18.
It was based on work the authors completed last summer in which they examined the relationship between ADHD symptomatology measured in the first and senior years of college and outcomes measured by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshmen Survey and College Senior Survey, data collected yearly through Hamilton’s Office of Institutional Research.
McKee and her students found that symptoms of inattention were uniquely related to a broader range of negative outcomes (academic, emotional and cigarette use) than symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity, which were related to risky behavior and poor emotional outcomes.
Interestingly, greater hyperactive/impulsive symptoms in the first year were related to a more positive social self-concept in the first and senior years, suggesting some benefit to those symptoms. Improvement or worsening of inattention over time significantly related to both academic and emotional senior-year outcomes.
McKee said this work has the potential to inform intervention efforts for students with high ADHD symptomatology that specifically target inattentive symptoms.
