eco, that's really tough that your DS is struggling so much with the stimulants. As if it wasn't bad enough that they're not helping the way you might hope, it's brutal that they are adding to your DS's frustration and to conflict with him. Sending oodles of commiseration.
As I understand it, a huge piece of ADHD is trouble with factoids. I certainly see it with my kids. Isolated bits of data are really hard for them to absorb. Complex concepts with context, much, much easier. We could actually see this really clearly in memory tests in my daughter's psych assessment, where scores ranged from 30s to 90s, generally increasing with more meaningful tasks. For example, her recall of story details was amazing, but words lists not so much.
It's really important for them to have an over-arching concept or framework first, into which they can insert the bits of data. Like a minerals classification scheme, with an understanding of all the key characteristics that could be looked at and how they are used to sort/ differentiate the various minerals... I'm the antithesis of visual spatial, but I suspect the way my kids would deal with that kind of question is to picture a periodic table kind of schematic in their head, find the mineral in question, and then derive its characteristics from what they know about the characteristics associated with the rows and columns into which they have put that particular sample....
