New ADHD intervention yields promising results | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › New ADHD intervention yields promising results New ADHD intervention yields promising results Published: May 21, 2006 Author: Erik Runyon Navigating the social and emotional landscape of adolescence can be challenging for even the most adept young teen. But for children who suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD,even ordinary daily routines like getting up and getting ready for school can be a struggle. Following a teachers instructions poses an additional set of complex challenges. Lack of impulse control and/or inattentiveness often defines the day-to-day life of an ADHD sufferer. Psychology researchers at Notre Dame recently have conducted a study on adolescents with ADHD to learn more about the disorder and to determine if the working memory of a person with ADHD can bere-trainedto operate more efficiently. Attention is a complex function.Its not just one ability, but a host of abilities is involved,explains Brad Gibson, associate professor of psychology, who is working on this project with Dawn Gondoli, associate professor of psychology; Julie Braungart-Rieker, professor of psychology, and Alesha Seroczynski, director of research at Madison Center. ADHD is thought to be an impairment of the brains executive functioning, possibly the working memory,Gibson says.For people with ADHD, the ability to hold information temporarily in mind is especially vulnerable to distraction. So organizing behavior across timelike remembering the series of things to do in order to get ready in the morningrequires the ability to suppress distraction, and kids with ADHD have trouble with that. Based on a similar study conducted in Sweden, which showed that a persons working memory could be strengthened,Gibson and his colleagues administered a memory exercise to a group of students from a local middle school who had been diagnosed as having ADHD, and who were taking medication for it. Every day for five weeks, these middle school students worked for 40 minutes on a specially designed computer program involving visual-spatial and verbal memory games.Students had to remember the sequence of a series of numbers or images, for instance, and replicate that sequence. The results were encouraging. We knew we could measure and isolate the working memory, but it was not entirely clear if we could change it,Gibson said.But after this training, the majority of students did report improvements in behavior and symptoms of their ADHD, are doing more and can handle more. Their parents also noticed changes and improvements. Gibson reports that areas like reading comprehension also improved, allowing students to work at higher levels and maintain their new-found abilities. Like many research projects, the results shed light on an issue, but simultaneously presented additional questions. The range of behaviors that can be affected by the working memory training will be the subject of future studies,Gibson said. If emotion regulation is also affected by the working memory, then, with training, it is possible that the ability to control impulses could be heightened in children with ADHD.Lack of impulse control often is a symptom in children diagnosed with ADHD. An unlikely group also has shown interest in the results of this experiment: the U.S. Army. Men and women who have ADHD are prohibited from taking stimulant medication once they have enlisted. The results of this memory training provide the potential for non-medical treatment of ADHD, opening additional doors not only for children and adolescents, but also for adults. TopicID: 17645 Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn