Virginia Douglas, Professor Emerita at Montreal's McGill University, has been a pioneer in the study of ADHD and was among the first to make this a field of respected scientific inquiry. She demonstrated that one could conduct both basic and meaningful research on a clinical population of children. She was among the first researchers to conduct controlled drug trials and to propose behavior modification to improve problems of attention and impulsivity. Her classic article in the 1970s, ''Stop, Look, and Listen,'' was the primary stimulus for the change in the name of the characteristics of the diagnostic category from an emphasis on hyperactivity to an emphasis on attention.

She developed one of the two models of hyperactivity and influenced the research in the area during the 1970s. Douglas was one of the first to develop a battery of measures of various behavioral and cognitive domains. She found that hyperactive children did not necessarily and uniformly have more reading or learning disabilities than other children.

Her model found that four deficits accounted for the symptoms of ADHD:

1. Children had difficulty with the investment, organization, and maintenance of attention and effort.

2. Children had difficulty controlling impulses.

3. Children had difficulty in adapting to various situations.

4. Children have a desire to seek immediate reinforcement.

The research of Douglas and her team are credited with the reasons the disorder was renamed attention deficit disorder (ADD) in 1980 with the publication of Diagnosis and Statistical Manual III (DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association 1980). In the official revised taxonomy, deficits in sustained attention and impulse control were formally recognized as of greater significance in diagnosis than hyperactivity. She now studies the cognitive and neuropsychological deficits of children with ADHD and is interested in the effects of pharmacotherapy, cognitive training, and reinforcement on these children's deficits.

Bibliography:

1) Berman, T., Douglas, V. I., and Barr, R. G. 1998. Effects of methylphenidate on complex cognitive process in attention-deficit hyperactive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 88:90-105

2) Douglas, V. I. 1998. Cognitive control processes in attention-deficit hyperactive disorder. In Handbook of disruptive behavior disorders, edited by H. C. Quay and A. E. Hogan, Chapter 5, 105-38. New York: Plenum Publishing

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