Subjects

It was originally anticipated that several psychologists and pediatricians specialising in AD/HD, as well as a neurofeedback clinic would provide AD/HD subjects. However only one of the former was able to fulfill this commitment, providing 4 subjects with an attentional deficit, diagnosed by a pediatrician. Through acquaintances of the author, 9 subjects without an attention disorder were admitted to the study for the control group. In an effort to recruit more subjects to ensure a subject pool of approximately 50 participants, a press release (see Appendix A) was sent to two national women's magazines and two daily Melbourne newspapers. One of the latter, The Herald Sun, published an article outlining the aims of the present study and advertising the opportunity for healthy children and children with ADHD or ADD to participate (see Appendix B). A telephone number was provided for interested readers to enquire about participation. An article also appeared in the Medical Observer (see Appendix C).

Three hundred and forty seven telephone enquiries were received from parents and one from an adolescent with ADHD who wished to participate, as a result of The Herald Sun article. Initially, calls were received on two telephone lines. The author took calls on one of the lines and interviewed respondents. Contact details were recorded from callers on the second line. Since 13 subjects were already confirmed as participants, the first 47 respondents to The Herald Sun article were contacted. It was anticipated that a number of those 47 would not elect to take part in the study, so the additional 10 respondents were contacted to ensure that the quota of approximately 50 subject would be met. The telephone interview was conducted if it had not already been completed. Each caller was asked a number of questions and details were recorded directly in a Microsoft Access data base form (see Appendix D). Epileptic respondents were excluded from the present study, since it has been reported that seizures can be instigated by exposure to flickering visual stimuli (North, North & Coble,1996).

Callers were then invited to schedule a VRDE appointment for their children. Thirty nine respondents elected to proceed, giving a total of 52 subjects: 24 controls and 28 AD/HD. Of all subjects, 74.5% had at least one sibling participating as well.

After the first 47 eligible calls, further respondents were advised that all places were filled and were told that they would be placed on a waiting list, and considered for future research. They were also given details of four complementary medicine approaches for AD/HD and learning difficulties. After the second day of enquiries, a pre-recorded message informed respondents that the subject quota was filled, and invited callers to record, fax or email their contact details and whether they were applying to participate as part of the control or AD/HD group.

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