external-prompts

Self-Regulation and Barkley’s Theory of ADHD

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A CDC report esti­mat­ed that, in 2003, 4.4 mil­lion youth ages 4–17 lived with diag­nosed ADHD, and 2.5 mil­lion of them were receiv­ing med­ica­tion treat­ment. Now, which is the core deficit under­ly­ing ADHD-so that treat­ments real­ly address it? and how are ADHD and brain devel­op­ment relat­ed? Keep reading…

ADHD & the Nature of Self-Con­trol — Revis­it­ing Barkley’s The­o­ry of ADHD

— By David Rabin­er, Ph.D

As implied in the title of his book, ADHD and the Nature of Self-Con­trol, Dr. Barkley argues that the fun­da­men­tal deficit in indi­vid­u­als with ADHD is one of self-con­trol, and that prob­lems with atten­tion are a sec­ondary char­ac­ter­is­tic of the disorder.

Dr. Barkley empha­sizes that dur­ing the course of devel­op­ment, con­trol over a child’s behav­ior grad­u­al­ly shifts from exter­nal sources to being increas­ing­ly gov­erned by inter­nal rules and stan­dards. Con­trol­ling one’s behav­ior by inter­nal rules and stan­dards is what is meant by the term “self-con­trol”.

[Read more…] about Self-Reg­u­la­tion and Barkley’s The­o­ry of ADHD

Potential Nutritional Treatment for ADD/ADHD

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Dr. David Rabin­er’s Atten­tion Research Update drew my atten­tion to some recent research arti­cles on the poten­tial of fat­ty acid dietary sup­ple­men­ta­tion to help treat ADD/ADHD.

Stim­u­lant med­ica­tion for chil­dren with ADD/ADHD has been the pre­dom­i­nant treat­ment for years. Thus far, it has been quite suc­cess­ful, but we have yet to see the long term effects of chron­ic med­ica­tion. Giv­en that, it is worth at least inves­ti­gat­ing alter­na­tive ther­a­pies that can be used either in place of or in con­junc­tion with tra­di­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and behav­ioral treatment.

As one of the four pil­lars of brain health, nutri­tion has a sig­nif­i­cant impact on both phys­i­cal struc­tures in the body and behav­ior. Stud­ies sug­gest chil­dren with ADHD have low­er lev­els of both omega‑3 and omega‑6 essen­tial fat­ty acids.
[Read more…] about Poten­tial Nutri­tion­al Treat­ment for ADD/ADHD

Cogmed Working Memory Training

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Notre Dame Pro­fes­sor Bradley Gib­son, whom we inter­viewed a few months ago (see below) pre­sent­ed the results from his study recent­ly at the Soci­ety for Research in Child Devel­op­ment (SRCD):

Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame Pro­fes­sor and Research Team are First in U.S. to Val­i­date Break­through Study on the Effec­tive­ness of Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing in Improv­ing Atten­tion Deficits in Chil­dren (pdf)

  • “Dr. Bradley Gib­son, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, and his col­leagues (Gib­son, Seroczyn­s­ki, Gon­do­li, Braun­gart-Riek­er, & Grundy, 2007)  will share new find­ings from the first U.S. study on the effec­tive­ness of Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing for improv­ing atten­tion abil­i­ties in chil­dren with ADHD. The study val­i­dates pre­vi­ous research from Swe­den’s Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute which revealed a fun­da­men­tal break­through in the way atten­tion prob­lems are proac­tive­ly treat­ed. Gib­son will unveil the results of the U.S. study dur­ing the Soci­ety for Research in Child Devel­op­ment (SRCD) bi-annu­al con­fer­ence in Boston. Cogmed is a pio­neer in neu­rotech­nol­o­gy and a devel­op­er of soft­ware-based work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing products.”

Our inter­view with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gibson