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Sep 17, 2006

Working Memory Training and ADD/ADHD

By:

Mark Katz, a San Diego clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist with decades of expe­ri­ence help­ing ADD/ ADHD kids and adults, and for­mer Board Mem­ber of CHADD, and I had a very good meet­ing with a few school super­in­ten­dents on Saturday.

We dis­cussed the research state-of-the-art, cur­rent ADD/ ADHD inter­ven­tions and the future of prevention-driven interventions.

Some high­lights from our talk:

- More and more researchers are com­ing to see that the label “Atten­tion deficit” was prob­a­bly not the most for­tu­nate one. Kids and adults with ADD/ ADHD can pay atten­tion, when they are engaged in cer­tain tasks, so the under­ly­ing prob­lem is not a deficit of attention.

- ADD/ ADHD is not a prob­lem of know­ing, but a prob­lem of doing. The bot­tle­neck may reside in exec­u­tive func­tions such as so-called work­ing mem­ory. The prob­lem is exe­cu­tion, inter­nal­ized behav­ior, not con­cep­tual knowledge.

- For more infor­ma­tion on Exec­u­tive func­tions, you can check the excel­lent review in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Psy­chi­a­try, of Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg’s book The Exec­u­tive Brain

- Work­ing mem­ory is the abil­ity to hold dif­fer­ent things on line and manip­u­late them in real time in order to solve a prob­lem, com­plete a task…

- When asked if “work­ing mem­ory” and “short-term mem­ory” are the same, Mark explained that they refer to sim­i­lar con­cepts, if not the same, but that researchers stopped using the term “short-term” mem­ory many years ago, to make it clear that it is an active, not pas­sive, skill. In fact, he added, maybe it should be called “work­ing atten­tion” rather than “work­ing memory”.

- We dis­cussed the for­tu­nate trend that many schools are migrat­ing towards a pub­lic health model in help­ing kids with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and ADD/ ADHD, focus­ing on more pre­ven­tion at early ages than on reac­tive inter­ven­tions to major problems.

- Work­ing mem­ory can be trained by inten­sive and tar­geted Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams sup­ported by the use of computer-based pro­grams, like RoboMemo, the pro­gram that I came to know last year after a great Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can arti­cle that men­tioned their clin­i­cal study with kids with ADD/ ADHD, pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Child and Ado­les­cent Psy­chi­a­try (See research here).

You can read more infor­ma­tion on the sci­ence of Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams.

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Categories: Attention and ADD/ADHD, Education & Lifelong Learning, Health & Wellness, Peak Performance, Uncategorized

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8 Responses

  1. Elona says:
    September 20, 2006 at 2:40

    Thanks for the link to the Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can arti­cle about ADHD research. I see a lot of kids in school with ADHD and am going to inves­ti­gate the alter­na­tive treat­ments for them.

  2. Alvaro says:
    September 20, 2006 at 10:07

    Hi Elona,

    You can search for “Torkel Kling­berg” in PubMed
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez, to find the orig­i­nal clin­i­cal research Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can refers to, and more.

    Regards

  3. Elona says:
    September 21, 2006 at 5:21

    thanks :)

  4. The Neuroscience of Leadership and Brain Fitness « SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution says:
    September 22, 2006 at 3:41

    […] Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on a num­ber of these and other areas cov­ered in the arti­cle: — Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and brain exer­cise — On being “smart” and build­ing neural con­nec­tions — Ready to learn? — Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and Atten­tion — On atten­tion, trad­ing psy­chol­ogy and open minds — Emo­tions and Decision-Making — Phys­i­cal fit­ness and Brain Fit­ness — On being positive […]

  5. Working Memory Training and RoboMemo: interview with Dr. Torkel Klingberg « SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution says:
    October 11, 2006 at 7:03

    […] You may also be inter­ested in the fol­low­ing posts — Inter­view with Prof. David Rabiner on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and ADD/ ADHD — Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and brain exer­cise — Ready to learn? — Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and Attention […]

  6. Cognitive Neuroscience and Education, today « SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution says:
    November 9, 2006 at 9:35

    […] Some read­ings: — Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing lead­ing researcher — Inter­view with Dr. David Rabiner, ADD/ ADHD lead­ing researcher — Reflec­tions at a meet­ing with a num­ber of school superintendents […]

  7. mike says:
    December 30, 2006 at 2:42

    Inter­est­ing arti­cle, a lot of peo­ple with atten­tion prob­lems cer­tainly have work­ing mem­ory problems.

    I have ADD inat­ten­tive type. On a stan­dard­ised IQ test I scored around 120 but did poorly on the sub­tests requir­ing good work­ing mem­ory and quick think­ing, for exam­ple I was only able to count back­wards to 4 or 5 dig­its. I also did poorly on the cod­ing subtest.

    I am now start­ing to try some of the work­ing mem­ory pro­grammes on the mar­ket like MyBrain­Trainer and Brain­builder. I don’t know if they well lead to long term improve­ments but I am already find­ing they are quite a good way to kick-start a slug­gish brain first thing in the morning

  8. Alvaro says:
    December 30, 2006 at 2:49

    Hi Mike,

    Thanks for your comment.

    Count­ing 4–5 dig­its back­wards is not bad at all!

    I agree those exer­cises can be more use­ful than cof­fee to wake up our brains…

    As far as I know, the only pro­gram with seri­ous data behind for a) trans­fer to real life and b) long-term effects, is Cogmed’s work­ing mem­ory train­ing, RoboMemo (you can find more info in our site), but right now it is only offered for kids.

    Happy 2007!

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