Word: adhd
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...experience of being nervous was instructive because it mimicked, in a way, the cognitive strain under which an ADHD kid takes such tests. ADHD compromises the brain's executive functioning - its ability to master unexpected exercises. The same way I got 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...
...Longtime ADHD researcher Mark Rapport supervised the study, which is set to be published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. Rapport, a professor at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, notes that our activity level - how much we move around in everyday situations - is one of the most fixed parts of our personalities. If you are a fidgety kid, you will be a fidgety adult, even if you learn to manage your movements with caffeine, stress-reduction, a personal trainer or other adult accoutrements...
...still and pay attention seems counterintuitive at first. But that surprising fact lies at the heart of Rapport's work: stimulants augment your working, or short-term, memory, where information is stored temporarily and used to carry out deliberate tasks like, say, solving a challenging math problem. ADHD kids have a hard time with working memory because they lack adequate cortical arousal, and Rapport believes that their squirms and fidgets help stimulate that arousal...
...study was small - just 23 boys ages 8 to 12 participated - but uncompromisingly meticulous; it took four years to recruit, screen and test the participants and to analyze the results. Twelve of the boys had an ADHD diagnosis. The other 11 were developing normally. All underwent a battery of tests at Rapport's lab over four consecutive Saturdays...
Rapport also conducted a control experiment with the boys in which they watched the pod-racing scene from Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. He showed me a video of a couple of the boys watching the scene, and I was shocked: even the ADHD kids who had spun around endlessly during their cognitive tests sat perfectly still while they watched the pod race. The film clip required almost no working memory, no concentrated effort. The scene simply washed over the passively watching boys, none of whom had to move around to stay alert...