The Five Cluster Areas of the Brown AD/HD Scale
Summarized by Natalie Bradley, Learning and Disability Specialist
The Brown AD/HD scales measure the probability of Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder.
It also helps to identify the specific problem areas that a person may be experiencing. A person
with high probability of AD/HD may have impairments in some or all of the following five cluster
areas:
1. Organizing and activating to work: Activation
2. Sustaining attention and concentration: Attention
3. Sustaining energy and effort: Effort
4. Managing affective interference: Affect
5. Utilizing “working memory” and accessing recall: Memory
1. Activation
Those who score high in activation have great difficulty getting activated unless the task is
extremely interesting to them or unless it has become a real emergency. These people may
also tend to be slow in getting started and have difficulty in getting organized, not because of
lethargy but because of getting scattered or inhibited by worry.
Educational barrier: The individual may experience significant difficulty with early morning
classes or other responsibilities, and may have a pattern of tardiness. The individual may also
arrive without the necessary preparation or materials required for the task. In addition, the
individual may experience significant anxiety due to the appearance of lack of organization or
preparation.
2. Attention
Those who score high in attention may have chronic difficulty in reading even when they have
demonstrated average to above average reading skills. However, it is also possible that these
individuals may have a reading disorder concurrent with AD/HD.
Individuals who score high in attention may also be excessively preoccupied with one’s own
thoughts, getting lost in daydreaming, slipping off into imaginative thoughts, or suddenly
realizing that a long time has passed since they were aware of what they had been doing.
Educational barrier: The individual be easily become overwhelmed with a large volume of
reading assignments. The individual may also experience significant difficulty to maintain a
level of attention required to complete reading and other assignments.
3. Effort
Those who score high in effort experience a chronic lack of energy which may be interpreted as
laziness. Others report a slowness in cognitive processing.
These individuals may experience chronic difficulty in sustain effort for the duration of tasks, and
completing tasks requiring specificity, such as exercising effort to write legibly.
Finally, those who score high in effort may also exhibit very clear inconsistencies in work
performance.
Educational barrier: The individual may require extra time to complete tasks and assignments.
The individual may also require mini-breaks during extensive tasks. The individual may require
Additional time and help for proofreading and assistance in attention to detail.
4. Affect
Those who score high in affect may be quick to feel annoyance or frustration and may also
experience sudden surges of anger. In contrast to this manifestation of affect, some individuals
with a more vulnerable type of sensitivity may become easily wounded or inhibited. Some
experience a chronic undercurrent of demoralization that results from the persistent frustrations
and defeats often accompanying those with AD/HD.
Educational barrier: These individuals may withdraw or outwardly express anger due to a high
level of frustration. These individuals may suffer low self-esteem and a sense of shame due to
their difficulties. As a result, these individuals may also refrain from self-disclosure and may
also refuse help.
5. Memory
Those who score high in memory tend to forget something one needs to do, forgetting where
one has put something, or forgetting to bring particular items associated with tasks.
These individuals may experience chronic difficulty in encoding certain types of information into
memory, and yet have no trouble remembering other types of information.
This group also includes the characteristic of problems remembering while writing, or forgetting
what one was about to say.
Educational barrier: These individuals may also experience inconsistent difficulty with retrieval
of learned information. These persons may lose track of which words or letters they intended to
write, even while they are in the process of writing them, which leads to omissions.
