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Following Conversations: To Chat(GPT) or not to Chat(GPT)
Neurodiverse Writers and Their Processes
People with ADHD struggle with executive cognitive functions or “mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully” (“Executive Function & Self-Regulation”). I include the full list of executive dysfunctions recognized by the Cleveland Clinic (“Executive Dysfunction”) because of how each of these manifests and affects our ability to engage in various parts of the writing process. Executive dysfunction can look like any or all of the following:
- Inability to focus on just one thing.
- Focusing too much on just one thing.
- Daydreaming or “spacing out” when you should be paying attention (such as during a conversation, meeting, class, etc.).
- Trouble planning or carrying out a task because you can’t visualize the finished product or goal.
- Difficulty motivating yourself to start a task that seems difficult or uninteresting.
- Struggling to move from one task to another.
- Getting distracted or interrupted partway through a task, causing you to misplace items or lose your train of thought (like leaving your keys in the refrigerator because you wanted a snack, but your hands were full, so you put your keys down inside the refrigerator and forgot about them).
- Problems with impulse control, like snacking when you’re trying to manage your diet. Struggling with thinking before you talk, causing you to blurt out the first thing that pops in your head without considering that it might hurt someone’s feelings.
- Having trouble explaining your thought process clearly because you understand it in your head, but putting it into words for others feels overwhelming.
Many of the executive dysfunctions ADHD writers experience are due to decreased levels of dopamine; writing related tasks like organizing, staying on task and within scope, giving and receiving feedback are difficult, so thinking about the ways in which we are asking neurodivergent students to engage with the writing process is important. Automating some of these steps (i.e. portions of planning, organizing, and revising) have helped me manage and reduce some of the executive dysfunctions I experience throughout my own writing process. Prioritizing students’ rights to their own language (CCCC; NCTE) must include affirming their voice and autonomy as a means to their own language processes (Hubrig and Barritt 215). As instructors, we can support students by allowing them to compose in the way that makes sense to them (Hubrig and Barritt 221). The utilization of GenAI as a tool to automate parts of the writing process that executive dysfunctions make difficult legitimizes alternative knowledges by recognizing them. Recognizing students' identities and processes is a method of supporting students with other identities and literacies (Ubbesen, Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy), and can help build self-efficacy by giving them the option to explore methods and strategies that may better work for them.
Combining ADHD symptoms and examples of neurodivergent writers’ processes offers an opportunity to centralize accessibility in our classrooms. Disability scholars like Ada Hubrig, Anna Barrit, and Christina Cedillo share experiences and insights about the nature of their own neurodivergent writing processes. Barritt says her “brain works a bit more chaotically. I prefer to gather a lot of ideas, quotes, and concepts, and roughly organize them in the general structure I imagine for the paper. Then, I spend several hours ’binge-writing’ and voila! There’s an essay!” (222). Cedillo notes that she has struggled with conforming to neurotypical norms, at times questioning if this profession is even for her (216). Hubrig comments about various parts of scaffolded assignments leading to additional labor for them, saying, “could I make an outline first? No. But I’d draft a more completed form of my essay and go back and produce required artifacts like an outline” (212). This illuminates a certain degree of invisibility within the writing process, and we should consider how we can recognize this labor. For example, during my 90-minute commute, I often rely on voice recordings and other non-traditional forms of notetaking to compose my rough drafts. Like these other scholars, my process looks different than a more traditional, scaffolded approach. Asking me to produce a written rough draft would be asking me to conduct a substantial amount of additional labor. In a way, this inherently rejects my production medium, diminishing the value of my non-written draft. I ask us to consider how we might think about genAI processes to imagine a space where such tools can act as interventions to help us re-center which parts of the writing process are important to writers developmentally, asking ourselves what we value and want students to learn.