ADHD & Self-Perceptions

Children who suffer from ADHD often experience academic difficulties, social conflicts and negative parent-child interactions. Given that children with ADHD experience functional problems in multiple domains, one would expect that these children’s self-perceptions would be negatively impacted. However, research from our center demonstrates that many children with ADHD tend to underreport the presence of these problems. This phenomenon has been termed the positive illusory bias (PIB) and is operationally defined as a disparity between self-report of competence and actual competence such that self-reported competence is substantially higher than actual competence (as assessed via parent and teacher rating scales or objective tests). Our current projects strive to understand the underlying mechanism or function of this bias, the relative adpaptiveness of the bias, as well as the short- and long-term consequences of this pattern of self-perceptions. The findings associated with these projects have important implications for treatment modifications.