My discovery of the relationship between ADHD and time blindness, some people’s inability to judge the duration of how long an event takes, a judgement that Fontes et al. (2016) explain is a person’s subjective experience of time, was a subject for my unit 2 submission. It helped the unit 3 topic formulate for me, which, at this point, aims to adapt a time management model to be used with neurodiverse students who I support in one-to-one tutorials in the role of specialist study skills tutor at UAL.
One objective to achieve this aim is to use memories and feelings to underpin my practice with empathy. As I experience the passing of time so clearly with my neuro-typical brain, without confusion or frustration, it is difficult to truly understand what students’ barriers are. However, after working on the AR topic and getting immersed in the literature, I realised, I needed knowledge as well as empathy. So, another objective for me has become building knowledge around neurological evidence that areas of the brain are connected to our construction of temporal perception.
I have written about Fontes et al.’s (2015) super insightful literature review on some knowledge of the parts of the brain and their connection to our temporal perception in a blog elsewhere. From this reading, I concluded that I required both empathy and knowledge in order to infuse my AR with commitment. This felt like a bit of a revelation. I needed both Bloom’s (1956) cognitive and affective domains to engage to bring myself understanding on his third domain of psychomotor – as people’s sense of time is tied up with how the brain experiences motion within its integration of the priproceptive and vestibular senses. I have returned to this paragraph within this blog (October 10), as I have just been reading Wilson’s (2020) article from our reading list about transformational learning.
Wilson cites ‘Kiely’s (2005, 9) assertation that there is “an important interconnected and dialectical relationship between the cognitive and affective dimensions of the transformational learning process.” Processing is rational and reflective, while connecting serves an emotional learning need—and together they allow a student to experience transformation in terms of not only intellectual but also social learning’.
My grappling with the concept of time blindness required both affective and cognistive sources, which connected through social learning with my peers, as described next.
After ten years of tutorial support for spld students, the concept of time blindness was mentioned at a staff catch up at work, a topic I viewed with growing interest. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t come across this excellent explanation of people’s differences in time perception. So many students keep hitting the wall with the many ways I presented to them to become more incentivised on constructing and effectively using a time management strategy. With the discovery of ‘time blindness’, from my colleague, I could finally understand that people perceive time differently.
Here follows a personal memory that assists in my empathy and understanding that some people experience degrees of time blindness.
Memory: Seasons changing – leaves falling. – can I have a calendar.
Many years ago, when my neurodiverse son was around 13 and burst in the room tentatively asking me if it was Halloween soon, I said, ‘why do you ask?’ And he said, ‘because the leaves are changing’.
On his first entry to prison at 17, after weeks and weeks of 23 hour lock up and being released for exercise and a game of football, he announced to me excitedly in a prison phone call, ‘time’s going by!’
‘ Why?’ I responded. He replied, ‘Because when I was let out and playing football, I could see the leaves were changing colour!’.
‘Yes’, I said. ‘Time is going by. It’s autumn. It’s November.’
So difficult for him to imagine how much time he had remaining in there.
More recently, he’s in again. He asked for a calendar. I sent one in to HMP but it was refused.
References
Bloom, B. S.; Engelhart, M. D.; Furst, E. J.; Hill, W. H.; Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Vol. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay Company.
Fontes, R., Ribeiro, J., Gupta, D. S., Machado, D., Lopes-Júnior, F., Magalhães, F., Bastos, V. H., Rocha, K., Marinho, V., Lima, G., Velasques, B., Ribeiro, P., Orsini, M., Pessoa, B., Leite, M. A., & Teixeira, S. (2016). Time Perception Mechanisms at Central Nervous System. Neurology international, 8(1), 5939. https://doi.org/10.4081/ni.2016.5939
Wilson, B. B. (2020). Disorientation as a Learning Objective: Applying Transformational Learning Theory in Participatory Action Pedagogy. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X20956382