How 鶹Ʒ Ss this for exasperating: Your ADHD child fidgets and squirms his way through school and homework, but seems laser-focused and motionless sitting in front of the TV watching an action thriller.
Well, fret not, because new research shows lack of motivation or boredom with school isn 鶹Ʒ St to blame for the differing behavior. It turns out that symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder such as fidgeting, foot-tapping and chair-swiveling are triggered by cognitively demanding tasks 鶹Ʒ S like school and homework. But movies and video games don 鶹Ʒ St typically require brain strain, so the excessive movement doesn 鶹Ʒ St manifest.
鶹Ʒ SWhen a parent or a teacher sees a child who can sit perfectly still in one condition and yet over here they 鶹Ʒ Sre all over the place, the first thing they say is, 鶹Ʒ SWell, they could sit still if they wanted to, 鶹Ʒ S 鶹Ʒ S said , director of the Children 鶹Ʒ Ss Learning Clinic at the University of Central Florida. 鶹Ʒ SBut kids with ADHD only need to move when they are accessing their brain 鶹Ʒ Ss executive functions. That movement helps them maintain alertness. 鶹Ʒ S
Scientists once thought that ADHD symptoms were always present. But previous research from Rapport, who has been studying ADHD for more than 36 years, has shown the fidgeting was most often present when children were using their brains 鶹Ʒ S executive functions, particularly 鶹Ʒ Sworking memory. 鶹Ʒ S That 鶹Ʒ Ss the system we use for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning and comprehension.
, Professor Rapport 鶹Ʒ Ss senior doctoral student Sarah Orban and research team tested 62 boys ages 8 to 12. Of those, 32 had ADHD. Thirty did not have ADHD and acted as a control group.
During separate sessions, the children watched two short videos, each about 10 minutes long. One was a scene from “Star Wars Episode I 鶹Ʒ S The Phantom Menace” in which a young Anakin Skywalker competes in a dramatic pod-race. The other was an instructional video featuring an instructor verbally and visually presenting multistep solutions to addition, subtraction and multiplication problems.
While watching, the participants were observed by a researcher, recorded and outfitted with wearable actigraphs that tracked their slightest movements. The children with ADHD were largely motionless while watching the Start Wars clip, but during the math video they swiveled in their chairs, frequently changed positions and tapped their feet.
That may not seem surprising. After all, weren 鶹Ʒ St the children absorbed by the sci-fi movie and bored by the math lesson? Not so, Rapport said.
鶹Ʒ SThat 鶹Ʒ Ss just using the outcome to explain the cause, 鶹Ʒ S he said. 鶹Ʒ SWe have shown that what 鶹Ʒ Ss really going on is that it depends on the cognitive demands of the task. With the action movie, there 鶹Ʒ Ss no thinking involved 鶹Ʒ S you 鶹Ʒ Sre just viewing it, using your senses. You don 鶹Ʒ St have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition movement helps them to be more focused. 鶹Ʒ S
The takeaway: Parents and teachers of children with ADHD should avoid labeling them as unmotivated slackers when they 鶹Ʒ Sre working on tasks that require working memory and cognitive processing, researchers said.
The study builds on Rapport 鶹Ʒ Ss earlier research, including a 2015 study that found that children with ADHD must be allowed to squirm to learn.