Virginia Douglas

Virginia I. Douglas (born January 28, 1927) is a Canadian psychologist and emeritus professor at McGill University. In the early 1970s, Douglas contributed to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) research by highlighting the presence of marked deficits in sustained attention and impulse control in children with this disorder. Previous to Douglas’ 1972 article Stop, look and listen: The problem of sustained attention and impulse control in hyperactive and normal children, ADHD was referred to as hyperkinesis. It was widely believed that hyperactivity, not attentional problems, was the main factor underlying this disorder. As a result of Douglas’s research, attention deficit disorder (ADD) with or without hyperactivity was included in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III).^[1] in 1980.

Douglas served as the president of the Canadian Psychological Association in 1971. Over the course of her career she has received numerous honors and awards, including the Canadian Psychological Association Gold Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Canadian Psychology in 2004.

Early life

Douglas was born in London, Ontario. Douglas attended Smiths Falls High School in Smiths Falls, Ontario. After graduating, she moved to Kingston to study at Queen’s University. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in 1948, only discovering the subject of psychology in the final year of her undergraduate degree. Douglas attended the University of Michigan, where she completed two master’s degrees: one in social work and the other in psychology. She obtained her PhD in psychology in 1958.

Career

During graduate school, her interests focused on defense mechanisms in adults. However, after moving to Montreal to take a position as a professor at McGill University, she was required to complete a clinical workshop at the Montreal Children's Hospital. Influenced by this workshop, her research interests shifted to the study of ADHD, which was, at the time, referred to as hyperkinesis.^[2] While at McGill, she met Donald Hebb, an influential Canadian psychologist specializing in neuropsychology. She cited him as an important professional influence:

“When I developed an interest in childhood hyperactivity while working at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, I found several of my colleagues at McGill interested in the questions I wanted to answer, and ready to help. Although I had been warned that Donald Hebb, a world-renowned physiological psychologist, was ‘anti-clinical’, he proved to be a gently ironic source of wisdom and perspective”.^[2]

In 1971, in a Presidential Address to the Canadian Psychological Association, Douglas presented her theory that deficits in sustained attention and impulse control were more likely to account for the difficulties of children with hyperkinesis than hyperactivity. Based on her research at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, Douglas argued that children with the disorder experienced deficits in sustained attention that could even emerge under conditions where no distractions existed. Douglas’s research and ideas were published the following year in the seminal article Stop, look and listen: The problem of sustained attention and impulse control in hyperactive and normal children.^[3] This paper became the most cited in the field and shifted the focus of hyperkinesis research from hyperactivity to attentional problems.^[4]

In 1980, with the advent of the DSM-III, Douglas was one of the researchers responsible for the inclusion of ADD with or without hyperactivity. This new definition allowed children with purely attentional deficits greater access to medical resources.^[5]

Work

Douglas's research on ADHD expanded to the areas of learning, perception, cognition, memory, and neuropsychology. Following her paper, “Stop, look, and listen,” ^[3] Douglas proposed a three-component model of self-regulation to explain the cognitive and motor deficits associated with ADHD. The three components were attentional, inhibitory, and strategic or organizational.^[6] Douglas theorized that deficits in any one of these components might contribute to the difficulties experienced by individuals with ADHD.

• Attentional: effortful attention
• Inhibitory: control of impulsive, inappropriate responding
• Strategic (organizational): processes that guide and direct cognitive processing

Douglas emphasized the importance of correctly identifying which of the three components underlies symptom-related behaviour in any given individual with ADHD. For example, performance failure may be falsely attributed to executive problems (e.g. working memory) when the fundamental problem is a deficit in attention (e.g. the effortful aspect of cognitive processing) or inhibitory control (e.g. the inability to inhibit a prepotent response).^[6] Douglas also pushed for the use of rigorous, laboratory-based measures to identify specific deficits in the three self-regulatory components.^[6]

Douglas’s more recent research has focused on pharmacotherapy, and, more specifically, on the effects of methylphenidate on task performance, impulsivity, cognitive training, and reinforcement in children with ADHD.^[7][8]

Awards

• 1977 - Canadian Silver Jubilee Medal
• 1980 - First Recipient of the Canadian Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Profession
• 1990 - Recipient of the 1990 Distinguished Contribution Award, Section on Child Clinical Psychology, American Psychological Association
• 1996 - Recipient of CH.A.D.D. (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) Award in Recognition of Outstanding Professional Achievements in the Field of Attention Deficit Disorder^[9]
• 2004 - Recipient of the Canadian Psychological Association Gold Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Canadian Psychology ^[9]

References