ADHD and exam recall

[Itstoday]

Hi, my son has ADHD and is about to sit his A level in maths. As is quite common for adhd kids he is not achieving the grade his teacher thinks he is capable of. One of the problems he has always experienced is that in the exam he has trouble remembering what he has learnt, recalling what he needs to do in a question. When they are going through the paper after he will need the smallest of hints and he will know exactly what to do, but can’t link the question to what he has learnt in the exam. I hope I’m making sense.

is this an adhd thing? He has poor working memory and very slow processing I know that. I would like an article or something that helps explain it, but what I find on working memory more talks about holding information in mind and I can’t work out if this links to his very poor memory retrieval in exams.

it’s like all he has learnt is behind lots in his mind and they are all shut. He doesn’t know which door to open, but when someone tells him
which door it is he can access all he’s learnt.

Hi, I am a coach for teenagers and can give you a few tips. First of all, you need to make sure that he is relaxed at the very start of the exam as he could be in a fight/flight/freeze mode and that would definitely block access to some part of his memory. From what you are saying, it seems that this might be the case. Also, there might be some "conditioning" (linked to ADHD or other) that makes him think he will fail and therefore put him in the wrong mindset - listen to Carol Dweck's TedTalk to know more. If this is the case, changing his mindset to a growth mindset, coupled with very simple breathing or visualisation exercises could help him be in the right state at the beginning of the exam or when he panics with a tricky question.
Also, there are things you can do to develop working memory, as well as other memory tools on this page - https://www.teencoaching.co.uk/brain-boosting-tools
I hope this helps.

It’s not specifically an ADHD thing, it’s just an “exam” thing. Lots of people struggle with this, my husband is one of them. It’s not that he doesn’t know the information or know what to do, it’s just that in an exam situation he struggles to recall it. So for my husband when he sat his exams for a work promotion awhile ago I would go through past questions with him and he’d say he couldn’t remember but if I gave a clue of 1 word suddenly that would almost unlock it in his mind and he could then give me the full detailed answer!

It’s really common in lots of people, not specific to ADHD.

I have been a maths GCSE tutor for 20 years. I have found that students with ADHD absolutely find it much harder to take in and then remember information than the average student.

The only thing I have found that helps are overlearning techniques Your son will need to spend more time than average learning/memorising/repeating information and methods to get them to stick and to recall them when he needs to.

I used to talk to my students about the "long term memory filing cabinet". It takes lots of practise at both storing the information ( eg revision/ learning info) and getting it out again ( eg doing practice exam questions, seeing if you can write down the steps to doing a particular type of maths problem the day after you learn it etc)

If visual thinking is one of his strengths (does he think in images/diagrams etc) making his own revision cards with charts/diagrams/mindmaps/silly pictures to help the memory could be useful.

It will mean he is far less able to "wing it" with exams than many other able students who find recall easier.

Yes it may be an adhd thing. If it is then no amount of relaxation etc will shift him up to the expected level of output. If this is the case then a few things might be helpful.

Firstly masses of tedious repetitive overlearning (this is a well known need for adhd students). Maybe more than double the amount of time needed by other students.

Next, rework the material from as many different directions as you have time for. The more different neuron connections the student has for the info, the more chance of snagging a memory connection in the exam.

Include in this work the use of colours pictures or diagrams, again another chance for the brain to snag the missing info.

Spend additional time with past papers and mark schemes going through questions one at a time asking what part of the course is this from, where’s this stuff in my notes. With lots of practice this skill can be improved.

In my experience the student with adhd might not be able to exercise any metacognition during the exam (actively reflecting on what the question is asking etc). Therefore masses of overlearning of facts and question/answer types can help improve the chance of getting a grade closer to their ability level.

Ahaa cross post there with an actual
expert with surprisingly similar sugggestions

It could be an adhd thing.

i have adhd (also autistic though so complicates things slightly), i always do so much better in exams than i think i will (the majority of the time anyway). Not amazingly but a/bs (apart from English and maths which I was just rubbish at) also noting that I’m in Scotland so different system.

in class it was like I never paid any attention, and I really couldn’t have told you what was taught 75% of the time. I am shockingly bad at coursework, it was never ever on time and was mainly b/c at the most. I never did homework. I also did basically no revision.

but come an exam, I had this ability to just regurgitate information and explain and come to conclusions and that sort of thing. I was never good at English analysis, or things that needed interpretation or made up things, and things that needed formulas that you needed to remember. But like history/geography/modern studies that sort of thing, I don’t know how it worked but it just worked and largely made sense.

this only ever happened for final exams, never prelims or practice ones.

even in class with hints I was like I really have no idea.

i realise this doesn’t help you, and im the total opposite of your son it seems. So im not sure why i wrote all this tbh.

Thanks everyone.

The idea of him doing revision cards or ever writing anything down is very funny. He really does have a very scattered brain - there is no organisation of information at all.

He says that he needs to do loads of practice papers so he can then recognise questions in the exam, so I think he does know what he needs to do.

It is quite correct that the issue is getting the information out that he has in there and during an exam he does not have the executive functioning skills to analyse the question and work out what it might be, he needs to be able to recognise somehting about it and that will only come with practice.

I think he may do better than people think he will as he does tend to go up a level on the actual day (well did in GCSE's anyway).

Honestly my DS likens his brain’s data entry system to a cross cut shredder, and having seen his struggles that seems exactly right.

Audhd here. I actually have an elephantine memory. Until you put an exam paper in front of me, that is, then it goes boom.

@FlowerBarrow god yes - such a good description. It is very hard when it feels like such an uphill battle.

It actually can be an ADHD thing. Part of the executive functioning issues can be issues with recall. I can't, for instance, in an interview situation recall examples of things I have done many many times for competency based interviews. I also am rubbish at quizzes as although I know a lot of facts I often can't recall them when I need to. I know it's in there I just can't bring it to mind. A trigger (as the op has says) often unlocks the door! I have similar issues with word recall. I know the word I want, and that a word exists but I can't think what it is. Sometimes the wrong word comes out entirely.

This all gets much worse when under pressure so interviews can be pretty embarrassing or, as the OP has outlined, it can get worse in an exam situation.

Executive functioning issues I feel are best described by thinking of it as a bit of a rubbish library. Most of the books you want are in there but they aren't organised very well, books are often filed in the wrong place, and the librarian is a bit slow and often on a break. Sometimes the librarian is having a good day and is efficient and on it, on other days, she can't find anything.

The book buying team (working memory) is also really rubbish; most of the books go missing, and never make it in to the main library.

Not sure what the answer is to this though. When I am interviewing I ask for the questions in advance so I have time to think about and prep examples and structure my answers (which I can't do in my head). In situations where I can't do this, I go over and over the examples and possible questions. Very helpful to do this at the last minute as then it's seems easier to recall them. Not sure how helpful this is for an exam but perhaps if there were key issues he's forgetting then you could put these on cards to go offer on the morning of, or just going into an exam.

I know with Maths A level it's really hard to work out what techniques you need to use to answer the questions. It's not obvious from the questions, you have to able to apply multiple techniques to solve the problem. The only way to master this is to do multiple past papers and keep doing them over and over again. I also know people who had to get a tutor so they could master this part.

Good luck to your DS!!