Cogmed’s Working Memory Training in CHADD (ADD/ ADHD)
Am getting ready for CHADD conference in Chicago later this week. Will get to meet the Cogmed team, including Dr. Torkel Klingberg, coming from Sweden for the ocassion.
A number of people have asked me for some preliminary information from the replication studies done based on Cogmed’s Working Memory Training Program. Here you have a couple of univeristy articles (peer-reviewed journal papers take longer to appear):
- University’s of Notre Dame’s New ADHD intervention yields promising results: “ADHD is thought to be an impairment of the brain’s executive functioning, possibly the working memory,” Gibson says. “For people with ADHD, the ability to hold information temporarily in mind is especially vulnerable to distraction. So organizing behavior across time–like remembering the series of things to do in order to get ready in the morning–requires the ability to suppress distraction, and kids with ADHD have trouble with that.”. “After this training, the majority of students did report improvements in behavior and symptoms of their ADHD, are doing more and can handle more. Their parents also noticed changes and improvements.”
“Gibson reports that areas like reading comprehension also improved, allowing students to work at higher levels and maintain their new-found abilities.”
- Stanford University’s RoboMemo remobilizes working memory: “Computerized cognitive training effectively improved regular students’ short-term memory and ability to control cognitive tasks in a school setting,” Yuan says. “Further studies are warranted to examine the training’s impact on students’ fluid intelligence and science achievement.”
In short: good results for kids with ADD/ ADHD, which has been the core focus of the research and program so far. More research is needed to assess the benefits for everyone’s science (and math) skills.
Alvaro, in answer to your question regarding neuroscience carnivals, there are two — Encephalon and The Synapse. They were both started at around the same time, in June this year. Encephalon was started by me, and The Synapse by Jake at Pure Pedantry.
Submissions to both these carnivals have been dwindling lately, so please do contribute to both of them. You can find more details on their respective host blogs, and they’re both are listed at BlogCarnival.com.
Thanks. Will happily contribute.