Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common childhood psychological condition involving inattentiveness and/or hyperactivity or impulsivity. Children with ADHD have a Positive Illusory Bias (PIB) where they overestimate their abilities. This bias is different from the normal optimism of typically-developing children because it is more extreme, counterintuitive, and maladaptive. Most research suggests that the PIB exists to protect the child's self-esteem. Indeed, receiving positive feedback lowers the PIB in children with ADHD, presumably because this feedback decreases their need to protect themselves. No studies examine whether the importance of a task affects the presence of the PIB. The proposed study tests the association between task importance and the PIB, and also examines whether the effect of positive feedback in reducing the PIB is stronger when the task is of higher importance to the child. Children with ADHD will rate the relative importance of their functioning in social and academic tasks, and predict how well they will perform on these tasks. They will receive positive or neutral feedback after they complete the tasks, and then rate their performance again. I argue that children with ADHD will show little or no PIB in areas unimportant to them and their estimates in these areas will not be affected by feedback, because their self-esteem is not dependent on their functioning in these non-important areas. Specifically, children are predicted to have a higher PIB before performing a task if it is more personally important to them, and a greater decline in their PIB for a specific task after receiving positive feedback for a task that is more important to them. Those receiving neutral feedback should have no changes in their PIB, irrespective of task importance. Given that the PIB has been shown to be a barrier to treatment success, better understanding what contributes to this bias can enhance treatment outcomes for children with ADHD.