What is it about?
Hyperactivity is a core symptom of ADHD, but it's not clear if increases in movements are mainly caused by tasks that challenge children's thinking skills or by specific mental abilities. This study objectively measured hyperactivity to better understand how movement levels change in school-aged children with and without ADHD when engaged in tasks of varying cognitive-demands.
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Why is it important?
Our results show that children with ADHD have higher baseline levels of movement compared to children without ADHD, which only increase further when asked to perform tasks that require increasingly cognitively demanding tasks. Taken together, these results are important because they suggest hyperactivity in ADHD is greatest when they need to use their executive functions, which are brain abilities that help us plan and control our behavior.
Perspectives
One of the things that I really appreciate about this article is that it gives us objective evidence that we move more when things become harder for us cognitively. This idea is something that we have heard anecdotally from teachers and child caregivers for many years, with many teachers advocating creating time and spaces for children to get-up and move rather than requiring students to sit still at their desks. Some brains need to work even harder than others to learn the same things or complete the same tasks, so I am happy this paper can contribute to the growing empirical support to promote a better learning environment from which to learn in.
Elia Soto
Louisiana State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Is hyperactivity in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) a functional response to demands on specific executive functions or cognitive demands in general?, Neuropsychology, November 2024, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/neu0000975.
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