Chat(GPT)-ing about the Affordances Generative AI Tools Offer for ADHD Writers

In Praxis

While it is understood that not all writers engage in writing in the same ways, nor do they have the same writing processes, the use of genAI tools can alleviate writing-related obstacles that result from certain ADHD symptoms and executive dysfunctions. Calling attention to various parts of the writing process where automation can lead to more productive development of content by equitably redistributing labor and energy also promotes a sharpened sense of self efficacy and trust in students by acknowledging and validating their knowledges and processes. While learning new technologies may be a concern for some instructors because it requires varying degrees of temporary additional labor upfront, this is an instance where embracing the benefits of such technologies allows us to begin to consider how the benefits may outweigh the risks. Further, this is already labor we regularly carry out when we revise and refresh existing course materials as we continuously learn from our students, educational communities, and other scholars in the field. We are well equipped to do this work because we are already doing it as we regularly facilitate ways for our students to explore new ideas and processes through regular feedback to build upon their autonomy and self-efficacy.

I’ve broken down this section into two categories to illustrate how students can use ChatGPT and Whisper to automate parts of their writing processes. While the writing process is not linear, and certain components will occur and reoccur cyclically throughout the process, the next two sections provide examples of automating tasks related to labor, drafting, revision, and feedback.

Labor and Drafting

We have established that people with ADHD struggle with motivation and task initiation due to decreased levels of dopamine. People with ADHD often experience time as either “now” or “not now,” which, as you can imagine, affects everything we do. This temporal outlook makes deadlines, routines, and prioritization difficult. It isn’t that we struggle with the inability to plan or strategize, but rather, we struggle with the ability to initiate various steps in the routine, and end up doing it all in one fell swoop just before the bell rings. Hubrig and Barritt’s problematization of certain types of drafting and scaffolding affirms this particular struggle. I can remember having an outline due, but instead of writing the outline, I would write the draft. And when the rough draft was due, I would produce something that was closer to a final draft. Then, I would have to spend extra time intentionally messing up the draft I had in front of me to more closely resemble the rough draft I was expected to turn in. This often resulted in frustration and avoidance because I was being asked to draft in orders that felt unnatural, tedious, and impossible. These are precisely the kinds of moments that allow us to examine parts of the process that are valuable in different ways for different writers, and ones that can be used as bargaining chips in exchange for more productive areas to focus our attention.

In addition to the way we experience time, things like organization, structure, accountability, and formatting can produce other challenges that make writing difficult. The time it takes to compose across other mediums can be recognized and recovered by automating parts of the writing process to create a written version of the draft. For example, a student who has an audio or video recording can use Whisper to transcribe their files. They can then take the transcription and put it into ChatGPT and ask it to extract the main points, create a summary, or to put it into a specific format that makes sense to them during this stage of the process. Organizationally, students may use ChatGPT to create a schedule for them, both saving them time and helping them see the steps involved.

Those who experience the inability to focus on just one thing, fall victim to extreme hyperfocus, or struggle to move from one task to another can have trouble dealing with scope. Because at times it can be easy to get lost in one thing, we lose the ability to move ourselves forward and grapple with compulsion. This can manifest in writing in a number of ways, but can look like a lack of meaningful or efficient synthesization of scholarship. The writer may spend too much time engaging with only one or two sources, conducting a comprehensive overview of them, but losing the thread that was supposed to tether them to other conversations and the overall argument intended to be made in the first place. For me, this happens often and looks like a reference overload; not even within the paper itself, but reading other articles, books, and dumping them in another random Google document that I probably forgot to name (because surely opening my Zotero is too many steps to deal with), and before I know it, hours have gone by and I’ve made no traceable progress on the page in front of me despite putting in hours of work that would eventually shape a later draft.

Other executive dysfunctions causing inattention to detail may translate to avoiding writing tasks that require extra steps, like putting off standard formatting, in-text citations, or references. Multi-step tasks are especially laborious to complete because each step feels like a separate project on its own. While we may be great at generating ideas and seeing big pictures, it can be easy to run into scope-related obstacles. Students may choose to use ChatGPT to help mitigate some of this by generating a schedule or plan to identify goals and to visualize exactly what they’re working on to avoid scope creep. This creates an opportunity for the instructor to step in and talk with the student about their process and to recognize drafting patterns, working as an intervention to plan, create, and/or modify assignments that work for them. Similarly, using ChatGPT to automate the citation process can be helpful because people with ADHD often struggle with task initiation. This process can be more time consuming and more difficult both mentally and emotionally for them, and automating this step can help alleviate these symptoms.

Feedback and Revision

Even if a student is left with wonderfully kind, effective, thoughtful feedback, it can be overwhelming and difficult to know where to start when trying to implement that feedback. Recently, I have encouraged my students to think about ways we may be able to make this simpler, bypassing some of the wheel-spinning I’ve suggested they use ChatGPT to help them find a place to start by copying and pasting their collection of comments into the prompt box and asking it to summarize the feedback. The result may look like a concise summary where comments exist in one space. Having the comments exist in one space can help students feel less overwhelmed because it reduces the organizational overwhelm and avoidance that may stem from such an initially daunting set of revision related tasks. Students may prompt ChatGPT to group like comments that are similar or repetitive in content/suggestion to focus their attention to specific tasks to focus on with the intention of reaching a clearer and more attainable goal. They may also prompt it to compress them into a specific formatting style that they know is preferable to them (summary, bullet-point list, a story, etc.).

Further, Whisper and ChatGPT can be accommodating for students who struggle with focus, distraction and interruption/interrupting, daydreaming or “spacing out” during tasks or conversations, trouble filtering/expressing their thoughts, or verbally explaining their thought processes even if they understand it clearly in their head. It can be challenging to wrangle everything if you experience one of these things, let alone a combination of them, so utilizing Whisper for recording and transcription can help reduce the burden of trying to remember, say, everything discussed during a conference or feedback session. Students can again use transcription tools to help transcribe, summarize, organize, or extract arguments and key ideas, and this may be especially helpful orienting oneself when providing or receiving feedback. Additionally, having an accountability partner to work alongside is another useful strategy to mitigate symptoms and promote boosted task initiation, soundboarding, and productivity. When I have the opportunity to pilot my ideas with someone, I find it extremely beneficial because they act as a soundboard that helps organize ideas, redirect focus, ask pointed questions, and help extract what is important now and what may be “for another project,” leaving me with a much clearer sense of direction and scope. Soundboarding is one of the most important steps for me in my writing process because it creates a space where brainstorming, synthesis, and revision can begin to blossom in a productive way, and it stimulates my mind and keeps me engaged in ways working independently does not. However, as grateful as we are for them, sometimes, we might not have access to a feedback or accountability partner, and in those times, we can use ChatGPT to replicate a number of the things we seek from circumventing and sharing our ideas with another person.

It is important to have conversations with our students and ourselves as we consider the ways we’ll use ChatGPT, careful not to obfuscate its perceived functionality. In this scenario, the specific affordance here is leaning into the LLM as another agent involved in our writing process that “chats” with us to simulate particular attributes we value from working with human accountability partners. While these attributes include recognizing the features intentionally built into ChatGPT to mimic conversation like the fact it is a “chat” box and as you input things into the prompt box, it shows the user texting bubbles, emulating the act of chatting and imposing a sense of presence on the other end, the affordance may be useful for students who have previously worked with accountability partners to assist with initiation, accountability, and soundboarding.