Posted on 01/25/2005 3:21:32 AM PST by grundle
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&ncid=571&e=7&u=/nm/20050124/hl_nm/memory_adhd_dc
Memory Training Helps Kids with ADHD
Mon Jan 24, 2:43 PM ET
By Alison McCook
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A computer program that improves one type of memory appears to help kids with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), new study findings suggest.
Yahoo! Health Have questions about your health? Find answers here.
After around 40 kids with ADHD completed more than 20 days of training using the computer program, their parents reported they had significantly fewer problems with attention and hyperactivity, both immediately and three3 months after the program ended.
The form of memory the program addresses is called "working memory," study author Dr. Torkel Klingberg of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden told Reuters Health. This type of memory is what we use to keep information in our minds for short periods of time, and to complete day-to-day activities, the researcher noted.
"When you walk into a room and suddenly find that you have forgotten why you went in there, it's because your working memory failed," Klingberg said.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that working memory is impaired in kids with ADHD, Klingberg added. "These deficits can explain why they forget the 'internal plan' of what they are supposed to do next, or forget what they should focus their attention on."
To investigate whether training aimed at improving working memory helps kids with ADHD, the researchers asked 53 children with ADHD between the ages of 7 and 12 to complete working memory exercises using a computer program.
During the exercises, kids practiced memorizing the locations of objects or a series of letters. Half of children were assigned a treatment program that adjusted in difficulty according to the ability of the child, while the other half completed a comparison program, which stayed at a low level of difficulty.
Kids spent approximately 40 minutes every day for 25 days using the program, either at school or home. Forty-two finished the program and checked in for a follow-up three months later.
After training, the researchers found that kids who used the treatment program showed significantly more improvements in working memory.
Klingberg added that kids using the adjustable program were also better able to tackle problem-solving tasks. "The children were able to use their better working memory in order to control their attention and keep mental strategies in mind."
Moreover, parents also reported that kids given the treatment showed improvements in attention and were less hyperactive or impulsive, the researchers note in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Klingberg noted that children may be able to strengthen their working memory using other means than the computer program. "Working memory is required for many activities, and children could get some training from activities such as mental calculation or playing chess," he said.
However, Klingberg noted that kids likely need to test their working memory to its limits for long stretches for several weeks at a time to get the same benefits as the computer program.
SOURCE: Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, February 2005.
Also, this "disease" is much more common in the U.S. today than it was 50 years ago.
And it's much more common in the U.S. than it is in other countries.
And the criteria for diagnosis are quite vague.
Does this article suggest that this "disease" is in fact not a disease?
You betcha.
My mother and the nuns in school taught me to concentrate.
They enforced it too.
Concentration was my strong suit.
I need to get my hands on this program.
you are dreaming, my homsschooling son is ADD. We live a no television, no gamestation life in the country and he has had attention problems since he was six. He has according to AMEN ADD type 3.
There were kids who never made it in parochial school. By third grade they had gone becasue they didnt manage.
you are dreaming, my homsschooling son is ADD. We live a no television, no gamestation life in the country and he has had attention problems since he was six. He has according to AMEN ADD type 3.
It's not a "disease".
It's a lack of discipline in focusing. Kids are bombarded with all kids of crap like never before. Being able to focus is a skill that is not taught to kids so there minds wander all over the place. Since parents are often lazy or not around the problem gets worse and the drug companies LOVE to exploit this. Plus their patents are running out on most of their drugs and ADD is a cash cow for them. Teachers love it and lazy parents love it and of course the "self esteem" of the child is in tact (LOL).
/john
The "disease" is real and medication helps. It is also too widely diagnosed by unqualified people and too many kids are medicated who should not be. Kids who don't have AHDH are being turned into zombies but that doesn't mean that medication shouldn't be given to those who truly need it.
Since when is a disease cured by studying techniques? Someone get a dictionary! ADD drugs and all of that are just a cottage industry created to profit off of parents who don't want to teach Johnny to concentrate. Gotta love capitalism!
Your son really does have it.
Perhaps just 90% of cases are fake. The other 10% are real.
You don't know what you are talking about
OK. Your explanation sounds good. A real disease that some kids really do have. But most who are "diagnosed" with it don't really have it.
I have ADHD. It is a disorder.
But ADD is OVER diagnosed. And that bothers me. When people who don't really have it have some doctor say they have it, It really depreciates those who really have this learning disability.
There are many symptoms to ADD. For example- If I'm in a setting and there is backround noise/sound/music I can't have a conversation because I can't drown it out.
I notice that boys are diagnosed more often than girls and it seems to me that some of these boys are just active.
My mother knew something was wrong with me when I was all but 3.
I just emailed the good doctor for more information on his computer program.
see my post above. I held your opinion until my son arrived.
Disease or not, the condition DOES exist. I know because I has a particularly bad "case" of it as a kid. (which was a full decade before "everybody" seem to have it)
Having said that, however, 99% of the kids that are "diagnosed" with this "disease" today are just normal, healthy, active boys.
Yet another pile of bullsqueeze piled on the American public by lazy teachers and the teacher's union.
Where was this disease in the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries? Where does it originate?
Conservative estimates have 4 million kids on ritalin. Now, they are mixing it with other drugs, such as prozac etc.
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