Vedant A. Desai, MA, MS
School Psychology PhD Student
As a doctoral student in school psychology, I am dedicated to advancing the scholarly inquiry that bridges clinical and educational disciplines. My research is centered on the pathogenesis and identification of adolescent Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD). My broader work also focuses on moving beyond the dualistic mind-body view by integrating my research on cognitive functioning and quantitative methods to enhance existing theories and inquiries into the mechanistic nature of cognition, perception, and experience across development.
Research Interests
My research interests lie at the intersection of neurodevelopmental disorders and neurocognitive assessment, with a primary focus on advancing the understanding of higher-order cognitive processes involved with temporal memory, recall, and extrapolative processing. A further integrative approach to my work aims to broadly identify the nature of temporal perception in relation to disorders of chronobiology. My current work particularly emphasizes attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) within the integrative information-processing and broad neurocognitive/neuropsychological lens, especially through existing models on executive functions. One application of my interests is to reconceptualize ADHD pathology through an integrative framework spanning developmental clinical science and school psychology. This approach seeks to promote a more unified recognition of ADHD across adolescence and adulthood, highlighting the developmental trajectories and heterogeneity of the disorder. By leveraging insights from neurocognitive and psychometric theory, I aim to refine methods for identifying broad diagnostic precision by working on studying how and why a disorder exists. Through this work, I aim to contribute to both theoretical models of broader human cognition and applied practices that support diagnostic and conceptual precision to improve interventions, systems changes, approaches, and/or amendments.