Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESComputerized Training of Working Memory in Children With ADHD-A Randomized, Controlled Trial
Section snippets
Subjects
Referral sources included pediatricians, child psychiatrists, and special teachers in schools. We included only nonmedicated children because they were thought to have more room for clinical improvement of ADHD symptoms than children on medication and therefore give a better chance of detecting significant treatment effects. Furthermore, in Sweden, only a minority of children with ADHD receives medication.
Inclusion criteria were (1) diagnosis of ADHD of either combined or predominantly
RESULTS
The flow of participants is shown in Figure 1. Of the 53 subjects, three withdrew: two because of computer problems and one because of social problems not related to the study. Fifty children attended the postintervention visit. The criterion for sufficient compliance was defined before the study to be 20 or more days of program use. Forty-four of the 50 subjects met these criteria. Mean number of days was 26.6 (SD = 2.6) in the comparison group and 25.2 (SD = 2.2) in the treatment group.
In the
DISCUSSION
In this study, the treatment group that undertook high-intensity training of WM improved significantly more than the comparison group on the main outcome measure: the span-board task, which was a nonpracticed measure of visuospatial WM. This effect also remained at follow-up. In addition, there were treatment effects for response inhibition (Stroop task), verbal WM (digit-span), complex reasoning (Raven's task), and for parent ratings of ADHD symptoms.
The span-board task differs from the
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This study was supported by the Swedish Research Foundation (Vetenskapsrådet), the Wallenberg Global Learning Network, and Cogmed Cognitive Medical Systems AB. The authors thank Anna-Karin Adler, Gunilla Berglund, and Sven östlund for performing the neuropsychological testing, Jonas Beckeman and David Skoglund for their significant contribution to task design, Maria Andersson for managing the patient calls, and Johan Bring for statistical analyses.
Disclosure: Drs. Forssberg and Klingberg and Ms. Westerberg own stock in Cogmed. Ms. Olesen had a consultancy agreement with Cogmed. The other authors have no financial relationships to disclose.