How鈥檚 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鈥檛 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 鈥� like school and homework. But movies and video games don鈥檛 typically require brain strain, so the excessive movement doesn鈥檛 manifest.
鈥淲hen a parent or a teacher sees a child who can sit perfectly still in one condition and yet over here they鈥檙e all over the place, the first thing they say is, 鈥榃ell, they could sit still if they wanted to,鈥欌�� said , director of the Children鈥檚 Learning Clinic at the University of Central 性视界传媒. 鈥淏ut kids with ADHD only need to move when they are accessing their brain鈥檚 executive functions. That movement helps them maintain alertness.鈥�
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鈥� executive functions, particularly 鈥渨orking memory.鈥� That鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 鈥� 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鈥檛 the children absorbed by the sci-fi movie and bored by the math lesson? Not so, Rapport said.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 just using the outcome to explain the cause,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e have shown that what鈥檚 really going on is that it depends on the cognitive demands of the task. With the action movie, there鈥檚 no thinking involved 鈥� you鈥檙e just viewing it, using your senses. You don鈥檛 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.鈥�
The takeaway: Parents and teachers of children with ADHD should avoid labeling them as unmotivated slackers when they鈥檙e working on tasks that require working memory and cognitive processing, researchers said.
The study builds on Rapport鈥檚 earlier research, including a 2015 study that found that children with ADHD must be allowed to squirm to learn.