An intensive, five-week working memory training program shows promise in relieving some of the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, a new study suggests.

Steven Beck, co-author of the study and associate professor of psychology, found significant changes for students who completed the program in areas such as attention, ADHD symptoms, planning and organization, initiating tasks, and working memory. The findings are published in the November/December 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology.

Beck conducted the study n collaboration with Marburn Academy, a Columbus-based, private school for primary through high school students with learning disabilities. Marburn Academy is the only school in central Ohio whose entire academic and extracurricular focus is to support the unique learning and personal development needs of children who learn differently.

Beck and researchers tested software developed by a Swedish company called Cogmed, in conjunction with the Karolinska Institute, a medical university in Stockholm. The software is designed to improve one of the major deficiencies found in people with ADHD – working memory.

The software includes a set of 25 exercises that students had to complete within 5 to 6 weeks.Each session is 30 to 40 minutes long.The exercises are in a computer-game format and are designed to help students improve their working memory.For example, in one exercise a robot will speak numbers in a certain order, and the student has to click on the numbers the robot spoke, on the computer screen, in the opposite order.

Parents and teachers of the participating students completed measures of the children’s ADHD symptoms and working memory before the intervention, one month after treatment, and four months after treatment. Parents generally rated their children as improving on inattention, overall number of ADHD symptoms, working memory, planning and organization and in initiating tasks.These changes were evident both immediately after treatment and four months later.

Two other co-authors of the study were William Benninger, an adjunct assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State, and Kristen Benninger, a medical student at the University of Toledo

Read the Ohio State Research Press Release at http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/workmem.htm