Word: actigraph
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nervous, ADHD kids get momentarily lost, their attention fractured for a few seconds. Think about when you're reading and get to the end of a paragraph and realize you haven't been paying attention: that's what it's like for ADHD kids, all the time. My actigraph scores confirmed that I wasn't operating normally for a 38-year-old adult. Instead, during the experiment, I displayed the involuntary body movements of a typical 12-year-old boy. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens...
Since I've always been fidgety, I asked Rapport if he wouldn't mind putting me through the same tests he gave the boys. And so last week I found myself at the UCF Psychology Department, where a grad student affixed a device called an actigraph to my left wrist. Actigraphs look like digital watches and generate a signal each time they are moved, even slightly. They allow researchers to measure, quite precisely, a subject's kinetic activity. The boys in Rapport's experiments wore actigraphs on their ankles as well as their wrists because kids are often just...
Wearing the actigraph, I sat before a computer in a small windowless room and took working-memory tests. For one test, I had to recite aloud a series of numbers that appeared on the screen. I was asked not only to remember the numbers but also to restate them in proper numerical order. So if I saw 4, then 3, then 1, then 8, I had to say, "One, three, four, eight." Each series of numbers also included a random letter, which I had to state at the end: "One, three, four, eight...
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