(Press-News.org) For decades, frustrated parents and teachers have barked at fidgety children with ADHD to "Sit still and concentrate!"
But new research shows that if you want ADHD kids to learn, you have to let them squirm. The foot-tapping, leg-swinging and chair-scooting movements of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are actually vital to how they remember information and work out complex cognitive tasks, according to a study published in an early online release of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.
The findings show the longtime prevailing methods for helping children with ADHD may be misguided.
"The typical interventions target reducing hyperactivity. It's exactly the opposite of what we should be doing for a majority of children with ADHD," said one of the study's authors, Mark Rapport, head of the Children's Learning Clinic at the University of Central Florida. "The message isn't 'Let them run around the room,' but you need to be able to facilitate their movement so they can maintain the level of alertness necessary for cognitive activities."
The research has major implications for how parents and teachers should deal with ADHD kids, particularly with the increasing weight given to students' performance on standardized testing. The study suggests that a majority of students with ADHD could perform better on classroom work, tests and homework if they're sitting on activity balls or exercise bikes, for instance.
The study at the UCF clinic included 52 boys ages 8 to 12. Twenty-nine of the children had been diagnosed with ADHD and the other 23 had no clinical disorders and showed normal development.
Each child was asked to perform a series of standardized tasks designed to gauge "working memory," the system for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning and comprehension.
Children were shown a series of jumbled numbers and a letter that flashed onto a computer screen, then asked to put the numbers in order, followed by the letter. A high-speed camera recorded the kids, and observers recorded their every movement and gauged their attention to the task.
Rapport's previous research had already shown that the excessive movement that's a trademark of hyperactive children - previously thought to be ever-present - is actually apparent only when they need to use the brain's executive brain functions, especially their working memory.
The new study goes an important step further, proving the movement serves a purpose.
"What we've found is that when they're moving the most, the majority of them perform better," Rapport said. "They have to move to maintain alertness."
By contrast, the children in the study without ADHD also moved more during the cognitive tests, but it had the opposite effect: They performed worse.
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In addition to Rapport, the study was co-authored by Dustin Sarver of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Michael Kofler of Florida State University, Lauren Friedman of the University of Central Florida, and Joe Raiker of Florida International University.
April 17, 2015 - A multicenter team of U.S. and Venezuelan scientists, led by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center, have discovered the most diverse collection of bodily bacteria yet in humans among an isolated tribe of Yanomami Indians in the remote Amazonian jungles of southern Venezuela.
By comparison, the microbiome of people living in industrialized countries is about 40 percent less diverse, the scientists estimate. The team reports its findings today in the journal Science Advances.
The results, the researchers say, suggest a link between modern antibiotics ...
Research by scientists at The University of Manchester has revealed that the colour of light has a major impact on how the brain clock measures time of day and on how the animals' physiology and behavior adjust accordingly. The study, for the first time, provides a neuronal mechanism for how our internal clock can measure changes in light colour that accompany dawn and dusk.
In research publishing on April 17th in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, the researchers looked at the change in light around dawn and dusk to analyze whether colour could be used to determine ...
Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine, collaborating with a multicenter team of U.S. and Venezuelan researchers, have discovered the most diverse collection of bacteria yet in humans among an isolated tribe of Yanomami Amerindians in the remote Amazonian jungles of Venezuela. Bacterial diversity in the Yanomami, previously unexposed to antibiotics or industrialized diets, was found to be nearly double that of people living in industrialized countries, and was also significantly higher than in other remote populations moderately exposed to modern practices. The team ...
An annual report from Tel Aviv University researchers reveals that anti-Semitic incidents rose dramatically worldwide in 2014, with violent attacks on Jews ranging from armed assaults to vandalism against synagogues, schools, and cemeteries.
The report, released on April 15 by TAU's Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, recorded 766 incidents, mostly in Western Europe, compared to 554 in 2013 -- a surge of nearly 40 percent. The report called 2014 the worst year for anti-Semitic attacks since 2009. The authors of the report characterized such attacks ...
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have created an in vitro, live-cell artificial vessel that can be used to study both the application and effects of devices used to extract life-threatening blood clots in the brain. The artificial vessel could have significant implications for future development of endovascular technologies, including reducing the need for animal models to test new devices or approaches.
The findings are published in the current online issue of the journal Stroke.
Cerebrovascular disease covers a group of dysfunctions ...
Early indicators of the malaria parasite in Africa developing resistance to the most effective drug available have been confirmed, according to new research published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites with a mutation to the gene Ap2mu were less sensitive to the antimalarial drug artemisinin.
A study in 2013, also led by the School, suggested an initial link between a mutation in the ap2mu gene and low levels of malaria parasites remaining in the blood ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Previous research published by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and three other institutions showed that when children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and serious physical aggression were prescribed both a stimulant and an antipsychotic drug, along with teaching parents behavior management techniques, they had a reduction of aggressive and serious disruptive behavior.
Now, L. Eugene Arnold and Michael Aman, professors emeritus at the Nisonger Center at Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center, and their colleagues ...
RICHMOND, Va. (April 17, 2015) -- In a recent study, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers predicted which cirrhosis patients would suffer inflammations and require hospitalization by analyzing their saliva, revealing a new target for research into a disease that accounts for more than 30,000 deaths in the United States each year.
The findings could trigger a change in the way researchers study chronic liver disease and associated microbiota, the network of tiny organisms in the human body such as bacteria and fungi that can either bolster an ...
This news release is available in German.
Bonn, April 16 /Tokyo, April 17, 2015 - An international team of researchers at German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have revealed in a collaborative study - published today in NEURON, that neurons in the eye change on the molecular level when they are exposed to prolonged light. The researchers could identify that a feedback signalling mechanism is responsible for these changes. The innate neuronal property might be utilized to protect neurons from degeneration ...
By combining two highly innovative experimental techniques, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have for the first time simultaneously observed the structure and the correlated function of specific proteins critical in the repair of DNA, providing definitive answers to some highly debated questions, and opening up new avenues of inquiry and exciting new possibilities for biological engineering.
Scientists who study biological systems at the molecular level have over the years looked to the structure of protein molecules--how the atoms are organized--to ...
