Can structured brain training help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder concentrate better? A study from Georgia suggests that a structured programme of brain training may bring measurable gains, although the authors are careful about what their results can show.
The study, published in The Open Psychology Journal, was led by Dr Irma Khachidze of the Ivane Beritashvili Center of Experimental Biomedicine and Georgian National University in Tbilisi. It looked at whether a three-month cognitive programme was linked to changes in attention and behaviour.
ADHD is a common neurodevelopmental condition that affects children’s thinking and behaviour. The authors note that medication can bring side effects such as delayed growth, headaches, nausea, tics, and mood disturbances, which is one reason for interest in non-drug approaches such as cognitive training.
Of 61 children aged 7–11 who enrolled, mostly with the inattentive form of ADHD, 55 completed the study, 42 boys and 13 girls. They were recruited from schools and psychological centres. Over three months, they took part in computerised cognitive training twice a week, in sessions of about 25-30 minutes at school, and completed paper-based exercises every day.
Before and after the programme, the children completed a range of computerised tests of attention. Their parents and teachers also filled in standard rating scales on the children’s behaviour.
The children improved significantly on several measures of attention. These included tests of vigilance, the Stroop task, which measures the ability to ignore distracting information, and a Go/No-Go task, which measures the ability to hold back a response.
Reaction times fell on some tasks, including a visual search test. Other measures showed trends in the right direction that did not reach statistical significance.
The gains also seemed to show up in daily life. Parents and teachers reported reductions in inattention on several widely used rating scales, suggesting that the improvements partly carried over into observable behaviour.
The authors say the clearest improvements were in divided, focused, and visuospatial attention.
However, the study had no control group. The authors note that the gains may reflect natural development, practice with repeated tests, expectations, or a statistical effect known as regression to the mean. Neither the assessors nor the children were blinded, some children dropped out during the second month, and the younger group (38 children aged 7–9) was much larger than the older group (17 children aged 10-11).
The authors acknowledge this and describe their findings as preliminary. They say the results support multi-component cognitive interventions but cannot confirm effects specific to the programme.
For families, the study offers some cautious hope. Future trials comparing trained children with an untrained group will be needed to show whether structured cognitive exercises can really help children with ADHD.
