Exercise dependency and overuse injuries in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common condition, but current medications have limitations, pushing a drive for alternative approaches. Different exercise-focused approaches have shown promise, but concern has also been raised about individuals with ADHD showing greater risk of addiction, including exercise dependency. Using an online survey, we examined current exercise practices, including exercise dependency and the presence of overuse injury, which could result from over-exercising, in 114 adults with ADHD. We found that most were regularly exercising. None were classified as exercise dependent, but 38.9% were deemed symptomatic non-dependent. Hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were a predictor of the level of exercise withdrawal experienced and the co-occurrence of Autism Spectrum Disorder was associated with greater risk of overuse injuries. The data indicate that ADHD may confer some greater risk of exercise dependency, aligning with previous studies investigating other addictions and suggesting further research is critical

Bridging Open Scholarship with Higher Education and Postgraduate Training in Autism: A Primer and Guide

Over the past two decades, activists and autism researchers have raised many constructive criticisms regarding pedagogical and research practices in the fields of autism. While other fields have been focusing on greater openness and transparency to address concerns in research standards, discussions and implementations of Open Scholarship (OSch) in autism research and in teaching about autism have been limited. One crucial direction to promote OSch is through education and training. In this paper, we provide concrete recommendations to promote OSch practices in autism-focused education, and these recommendations are likely helpful for courses in the fields of clinical psychology, educational psychology, and developmental psychology. Recommendations focus on embedding practices such as transparency and reproducibility, pre-registration and replication as well as highlighting the role of OSch in promoting scientific literacy. Moreover, we promote social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education and professional training through the incorporation of autistic- and neurodiversity-based perspectives, research findings related to neurodiversity perspectives, contents regarding participatory research and adversarial collaborations into courses. We believe that applying OSch principles and practices in education of students, researchers, and future practitioners will substantially improve autism research and related practices. Keywords: Autism, Diversity, Higher Education, Open Scholarship, Replicability, Reproducibility, Social Justice, Neurodiversity Note: Inspired by reviewers' comments, we separated the initial manuscript (https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xzkjh) into three manuscripts, two for research and one for education (this one)

Opening up understanding of neurodiversity: a call for applying participatory and Open Scholarship practices

Recent movements towards a more open, intersectional, and inclusive academia(Birhane & Guest,  2020)  focus  on  the  need  to  address  traditional  power  imbalances  detrimentally affecting  under-represented  individuals  (e.g.,  women:  Pownall  &  Rogers,  2021;  people  of colour:  Berhe  et  al.,  2022;  non-WEIRD  [Western,  Educated,  Industrialised,  Rich,  and Democratic]  societies:  Puithllam  et  al.,  2022).  Hitherto,  neurodivergent  perspectives —i.e. non-pathological  variations  in  human  brains  (Walker,  2021)—are  often  overlooked  and misunderstood  within  behavioural  and  cognitive  sciences.  It  is  common  to  encounter assumptions that anything outside of neurotypicality is at best dismissed as outlier data, or at worst, considered disadvantageous and in need of ‘fixing’ (e.g., Gernsbacher & Pripas-Kapit, 2012). Such viewpoints hinder a broader understanding of human behaviour and cognition. Here,  we    call  for  more open and Participatory  Research on  neurodiversity  through addressing the issue of power imbalance.</p