Ernest Mahone

E. Mark Mahone

Ernest "Mark" Mahone is one of the current leading researchers in ADHD in children. He is also an advocate of single sex schooling.

Background

Ernest "Mark" Mahone was born September 19, 1961 to Leonard Ray Mahone Jr. and Jacqueline Joan Healthcote. Mahone married his wife Sue Ellen Gould on March 27,1986. The two have two children, Andrew Mark Mahone and Evan Michael Mahone. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor of Science in 1983 and a Masters in 1985. Simultaneously while he worked to recieve a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany he also had a clinical psychology internship with the National Naval Medical Center from 1989 to 1990. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 1990, he went on to have a clinical neuropsychology fellowship at the Harvard Medical School's Boston Children's Hospital. In addition he served in the United States Navy from 1989- 1996 . He currently serves as the director of the Department of Neuropsychology at the Kennedy Kreiger Institute and is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.. Mahone is board certified in clinical neuropsychology and is now a licensed psychologist in Maryland. He is the president elect of the American Academy of Clincal Nueropsychology, is an editorial board member for six journals: Child Neuropsychology Assessment, Developmental Neuropyschology, Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, and the Clinical Neuropsychologist .

Research

Mark Mahone’s research focuses on ADHD, movement disorders, learning disabilities, spina bifida, childhood cancer, prenatal alcohol exposure, and sleep disorders . Despite the wide range of topics studied, his main research focus is on children with ADHD. He places high importance on understanding and diagnosing ADHD early in children because of the developmental impacts an attention disorder can have on a child’s social and academic life in the future . He is currently conducting research studies at the Kennedy Krieger Institute on typically developing boys ages 9-14, children ages 4-5 with and without ADHD, children ages 5-9 with and without ADHD, and parents of children who have been diagnosed with ADHD . Mahone is also a proponent of single-sex schooling because he believes inherent differences between boys and girls coupled with social factors and norms can lead to sizable differences in the way boys and girls learn and interact in a classroom. Mahone recently received a grant to study the development of ADHD in preschool children. His studies are at the forefront of the ADHD field and his contributions should lead to more understanding of the disorder in younger children.

ADHD

School age

In his article, “The Effects of ADHD (Beyond Decoding Accuracy) on Reading Fluency and Comprehension”, Mahone outlines the ways that ADHD can impair school-age children academically. Multitasking, reading comprehension, processing speed, motor skills, and working memory tend to work normally in children without ADHD, however, those with ADHD experience deficits in all of these areas. Children with ADHD have a hard time multitasking, which in a academic setting means that they can’t listen to the teacher and take notes at the same time as well as students without ADHD. Mahone suggests that teachers let ADHD students record the lessons or give them outlines of the lessons to aid their understanding of the material. Reading and reading comprehension is the academic area that ADHD children have the most trouble with. Mahone believes that it is working memory deficits that inhibit ADHD students from fully comprehending the main topics of the reading or the major picture. Instead children with ADHD tend to get distracted by the small details and at the end of the reading can’t remember what they read as a whole. ADHD students also have trouble processing information as fast as other students. Processing speed is an underlying process of reading and writing. Because ADHD students can’t process information as quickly, they are much slower at reading and writing and often get distracted when the assignment is too long. Time pressure assignments like tests are especially hard for children with ADHD because of their slow processing speed but also because their motor skills are deficient and they are more likely to experience fatigue .

One interesting point that Mahone makes is that children with ADHD function somewhat normally until 3rd grade because up until this time the tasks and assignments are simple and don’t require a lot of processing. In 4th grade students undergo a change where they are no longer learning to read but are reading to learn. In this stage, students must understand and find meaning in what they are reading in order to complete the tasks and assignments from this time onward. This is why children with ADHD don’t start to struggle in school until this stage. This evidence supports Mahone’s claim that neuropsychological assessments of children suspected to have ADHD are necessary despite the fact that they are costly and time-consuming. In his article, “The Role of Neuropsychological Assessment in the Functional Outcomes of Children with ADHD”, Mahone found that pediatricians and primary care physicians rarely adhere to the ADHD diagnostic guidelines. Mahone also showed that ADHD often co-exists with other disorders and because of this, ADHD that is diagnosed without running neuropsychological assessments can miss the comorbid disorder, which can actually be costlier for the child and family. Mahone’s third finding was that untreated children with ADHD or other comorbidities are at a greater risk for poor outcomes in social, academic, vocational, and practical settings. Mahone is one of the only psychologists who believes it is important to neurologically assess children suspected of having ADHD despite all this evidence supporting his position and the positive effect it has on the quality of life of children with ADHD .

Preschool

By turning his attention to ADHD in preschoolers, Mahone aims to prevent the 4th grade failures that many ADHD students who are untreated experience. Through his studies on preschool children, Mahone hopes to understand more about the brain growth of children with developing ADHD in order to identify ADHD much earlier in children as well as understanding ways to treat the disorder . In his study, Mahone found that the caudate nucleus was significantly smaller in preschool children with symptoms of ADHD and also predicted how severe the ADHD would be later in life. The caudate nucleus is essential in the development of attention and cognitive control. At this early of an age, the cerebral cortex is normal compared to non-ADHD preschoolers. This is important because later in life, children with ADHD have a smaller cerebral cortex. This indicates that the cerebral cortex develops later in life than the sub-cortical structures like the caudate nucleus. This potentially means that one influences the other and if the caudate nucleus is smaller is induces the subsequent growth inhibition of the cerebral cortex. Mahone hopes to pinpoint the abnormalities in the caudate nucleus in an attempt to find a treatment that will lead to normal development of the cerebral cortex. Mahone hopes that if a treatment can help the cerebral cortex function and develop normally, higher cognitive functions will not be impaired in ADHD children and they will be able to function more normally than if the treatment had not been administered .

Single Sex Education

Mark Mahone has been a major proponent of single-sex education. “Natural contrasts between boys and girls combined with social factors can lead to big differences in how they act in the classroom”, he told the Washington Times in an interview about same-sex education . He claims that boys usually have what is called “interfering behaviors” which could cause them to be disruptive in class. In turn, girls may be afraid to speak up as to not be embarrassed by their male classmates. Having same-sex classes would solve both of these issues. According to the National Association For Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE), those schools that have implemented same-sex classes have reported to have students who are both more attentive and less disruptive . “There is a lot of evidence to suggest benefits for having single-sex education."

Mahone's views bring up a debate on whether or not same-sex education is ethical or not. Opponents of same-sex education believe this is a type of segregation and challenge the social equality of women .