Working Memory Training and ADD/ADHD

September 17, 2006 at 10:20 pm · Filed under Attention and ADD/ ADHD, Brain Fitness, Brain health, Cogmed, Education, Learning, Memory Training, Mental Health, Mind Fitness, RoboMemo, Working memory

Mark Katz, a San Diego clinical psychologist with decades of experience helping ADD/ ADHD kids and adults, and former Board Member of CHADD, and I had a very good meeting with a few school superintendents on Saturday.

We discussed the research state-of-the-art, current ADD/ ADHD interventions and the future of prevention-driven interventions.

Some highlights from our talk:

– More and more researchers are coming to see that the label “Attention deficit” was probably not the most fortunate one. Kids and adults with ADD/ ADHD can pay attention, when they are engaged in certain tasks, so the underlying problem is not a deficit of attention.

– ADD/ ADHD is not a problem of knowing, but a problem of doing. The bottleneck may reside in executive functions such as so-called working memory. The problem is execution, internalized behavior, not conceptual knowledge.

– For more information on Executive functions, you can check the excellent review in the American Journal of Psychiatry, of Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg’s book The Executive Brain

– Working memory is the ability to hold different things on line and manipulate them in real time in order to solve a problem, complete a task…

– When asked if “working memory” and “short-term memory” are the same, Mark explained that they refer to similar concepts, if not the same, but that researchers stopped using the term “short-term” memory many years ago, to make it clear that it is an active, not passive, skill.  In fact, he added, maybe it should be called “working attention” rather than “working memory”.

– We discussed the fortunate trend that many schools are migrating towards a public health model in helping kids with learning disabilities and ADD/ ADHD, focusing on more prevention at early ages than on reactive interventions to major problems.

– Working memory can be trained by intensive and targeted Brain Fitness Programs supported by the use of computer-based programs, like Cogmed RoboMemo, the program that I came to know last year after a great Scientific American article that mentioned their clinical study with kids with ADD/ ADHD, published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (See research here).

You can read more information on the science of Brain Fitness Programs.

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