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.
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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.
My girlfriend has this (she's 55) and is a first grade teacher. It is real, but probably is over diagnosed.
ADHD is the result of a deficiency in the dopaminergic system inside the brain. It is real, but grossly overdiagnosed.
ADHD has nothing to do with a "deficit" of attention, in reality. It is actually an overabundance of attention, coupled with a lack of effective filtering to eliminate secondary and background "noise" that distracts from the task at hand.
There is a clinical method for diagnosing the disease that shows fully 50% of behaviorally diagnosed cases are false diagnoses. For a child with the disorder, ritalin and its chemical family help make up for the deficiency in the dopamine handling system (when taken in a properly titrated dosage). For kids who are wrongly diagnosed, it turns them into zombies.
The above is fact. What follows is only my opinion.
The trend in diagnosing ADHD follows closely the introduction, promulgation, and elaboration of the "enrichment" theories of education. When I was in elementary school, the classroom was a rather dull place where one had to concentrate on paying attention. The "background noise" was deliberately reduced to enhance each child's ability to "pay attention". Those whose attention wandered often paid for it with embarrassment (or sore knuckles, if you had the ruler-wielding samurai type of teacher).
Today, the exact opposite educational theory is in play. Elementary school education is rife with "enrichment", adding visual and aural noise into the environment until formulation of an effective attention filter (for those with ADHD) becomes too difficult.
That's my $.02, anyway.
Yep.
The very thought makes my skin crawl.
I once overheard a comment that ADD should be called NWE - Not Whipped Enough syndrome. All humor has a grain of truth.
And suddenly adults are being diagnosed as having ADD. It began with children and now suddenly its moved on to adults.
We as professional organizers help adults who have a messy house and some of the organizers now specialize with adults who are diagnosed as having ADHD.
How did this suddenly become a epidemic?
In the old days if you had a messy house your mother-in-law coming to visit would cure you of the "messy-house-syndrom".
Anyway, we professional organizers can help the chronically disorganized. And maybe cheaper than docs and meds?
Problems with Working Memory are only one aspect of this disorder. While practice may help with that one problem it won't solve the many others that kids that actually have this disorder suffer from. Medication is the only way to help someone with a severe case of ADHD function normally. Anyone cured by just improving working memory did not have ADHD to begin with.
Ritalin's been around for about fifty years. And who ever said it was a "disease?" A disorder is different than a disease.
Just stating factual observations.
I have heard from parents I know that up to 15 or 20% of some classrooms have kids who require drugs, either ritalin, prozac, zoloft, etc. Parents drugging their kids with the complicity of some lazy HMO GP is just out of control.
You misspelled the opinions of some scientists, which contradict the opinions of other scientists.
Hope that helps heaps.
And my son has something called auditory processing disorder which mimics your symptoms. Came from 3 years of constant fluid on the ears before they figured it out. He can't process, or pick out, what he's supposed to hear through the background noise of school. Makes for a hard time on the playground.
I'm starting to have teachers mention ADD to me. No doctor ever has, just the teachers.
A couple of points:
1) There is lots of natural variation in how the mind (brain) works between individuals - the more extreme variants tend to get labeled as disorders, as they impede those that suffer from them, and their functioning in today's society.
There is also a tendency for the categories to be a bit vague, as they encompass several areas of variation - there are lots of brain quirks out there, even if some are more common than others.
2) The person who pointed to the change in learning environment is right on the money. While earlier, strict dicipline in the classroom made it easy to focus even for kids with attention problems, today "progressive", lax methods make it all but impossible.
3) Overprescription? I'd like some hard data here, even if I too get the feeling it happens. My personal anecdotes do not support overprescription though - the people I know who were diagnosed as ADHD certainly had some pretty major problems of a rather fundamental nature.
I have no objections to your observations. They are seemingly right-on.
Didn't mean to argue - just clicked a reply button at random :)
False.
Does this article suggest that this "disease" is in fact not a disease?
No. Since when does treatability prove that a disease never existed in the first place? ADD/ADHD is way overdiagnosed, but that doesn't mean it's a fake ailment.
This "disease" is largely (and there are a few exceptions) but largely... TO MUCH TV ... not enough structure and discipline in their lives.
This combined with Teachers who are either banned by their school districts from disciplining problem children or are so far left they actually think teaching a child discipline is child abuse.
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