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The thinking process involves a collaborative effort of both left and right brain hemispheres. Thoughts are bounced back and forth between the two. The right brain tends to process data as a whole comprehending the complete thought and its parts instantaneously. Impressions, feelings, and other non-verbal concepts are products of the right brain. Right brain thought processing can be called Holistic and notions such as time, space, and quantity are irrelevant. Left brain processing focuses on the parts of a thought and their relationships to each other. Such thinking is sequential, logical (innate logic and not formal logic), and takes time.
While it is normal to use both halves of the brain in the thinking process, most persons will favor one side of the brain to one degree or another. This preference usually involves control and dominance affecting the outcome of thinking along with the personality and demeanor of a person. Right brain preference (Holistic) is often associated with creativity, change, and emotion. Left brain preference (Linear) is associated with the practical aspects of living - common sense, planning, and the like. The vast majority of people, perhaps up to 90%, prefer the left brain (Linear) style of thinking. The right brain (Holistic) thinking style preference is as rare as left-handedness.
However, thinking style dominance among persons with ADD, is the opposite of the general population. The vast majority have a right brain (Holistic) thinking preference. From the Life Concept Inventory responses so far, about 70% indicate holistic thinking preference. I suspect it is even higher among the total ADD population. Does this mean that ADD is perhaps only a side affect of the holistic thinking process? Can the majority of persons with ADD be cured by simply retraining them to prefer the linear thinking style? Even more important, is holistic thinking and linear thinking the same for ADD and non-ADD persons or are their thinking processes different?
To explore the possibility of such differences four leading characteristics of the Typical ADD profile were selected. They are Self Esteem, Intimacy, Attention Deficit, and Distractibility. These traits are also strongly affected by how a person thinks. Therefore if the correlation of these traits to the Holistic and Linear Preferences of both ADD and Non-ADD persons are the same, then we can conclude that the thinking processes of the ADD and Non-ADD persons are the same. We could also say that there is a strong possibility that ADD can be cured by intensive cognitive and behavioral modification training.
But if the correlation of the four sample traits are different among the ADD and non-ADD subjects, then intensive cognitive and behavioral modification retraining to bring about "normal" behavior will not be affective.
The correlations of the four traits for the four possible groups are the opposite as shown in the table on the next page.
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