Traditional solutions are not enough. Learn how Play Attention can help increase focus and concentration.

A study published in the June 14 edition of the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics has sparked controversy regarding ADHD medication and the brain’s power to regulate itself.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by Dr. Adrian Sandler, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician and medical director of the Olson Huff Center for Child Development at Mission Children’s Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.  The research was performed over the course of eight years using 99 patients from Western North Carolina.

Sandler found that children with ADHD can do just as well on half their medication when the medication is combined with a placebo. They performed as well even when parents and children had full knowledge they were taking a placebo.

[Placebo --  A substance containing no medication and prescribed or given to reinforce a patient's expectation to get well. The placebo in this research was akin to a harmless inert pill].

Previous studies have shown that common stimulant medication causes side-effects like tics, weight loss, stunted growth, and even heart complications in some instances. This often causes trepidation in parents afraid of the possible side-effects on their children.

Sandler compared fully medicated children, children on reduced medication, and children on reduced medication with a known placebo. The results were quite intriguing.  Both the fully medicated and reduced medication groups had increased side-effects while the reduced medication with placebo demonstrated decreased side-effects. Furthermore, the reduced medication group reported decreased control of their ADHD symptoms. However, the control of ADHD symptoms was no different in the reduced medication with placebo group than in the full dose group, i.e. the reduced medication with placebo performed as well as the fully medicated group with less side-effects as well.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls and e-mails,” said Sandler,, who conducted the research with James Bodfish, a professor in the departments of psychiatry and pediatrics at UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine, and study coordinator Corrine Glesne.

“Medications work,” Bodfish said in a statement. “The question is whether we always need to use them at the highest dose. Many parents are concerned about placing their child on medication. Some choose not to treat their child because of concerns about side effects.”

While the research doesn’t address it, the obvious question is, Why? Parents and children in this study knew they were taking a placebo. Why then did they perform as well as their peers without the side-effects — at essentially half the dose as their peers? While the placebo effect has been studied widely, the exact mechanisms are unknown. We do know that the mechanism is governed by the brain. This clearly tells us that having ADHD or not, our brain is still a powerful weapon in our arsenal.

We also cannot exclude the influence of the parents during this research. Did they expect their child to do better? The authors suggest that this was so. This dynamic cannot be overlooked in your family either.

The bottom line is that we likely have far more control over our behaviors and cognitive processes than we are given credit for. Modern medicine, as this research suggests, is just beginning to understand the brain’s role in shaping our lives. We’ve known this for years at Play Attention. Cognitive training. Memory training. Motor skills. Attention training. Behavioral shaping. It’s time to take control over our lives. We’ve all got the power to do it. It lies right behind our eyes.

Research published in the July issue of Pediatrics reveals that too much time spent watching television and playing video games can cause attention problems.

A graduate student at Iowa State University, Edward Swing, found that excessive screen time, whether in front of a computer or TV, could double the risk of attention problems in children and young adults.

Swing’s research confirms previous findings from Dr. Dimitri Christakis, the George Adkins Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.  Christakis’ research found that faster-paced shows increased the risk of attention problems.  "You prime the mind to accept that pace. Real life doesn’t happen fast enough to keep your attention,” says Christakis.

The  American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has long recommended that children over the age of 2 view less than two hours of TV or computer per day. Prior to that age, they suggest no TV viewing or computer.

Swing compared data of 1300 children in grades three, four, and five who watched TV or played video games less than two hours a day to children who watched more.  He found that more video time could nearly double the risk of attention problems in children and young adults

"The children were reporting their TV and video game use and the parents were also reporting TV and video game use," Swing said. "The teachers were reporting attention problems," he said of the middle school students.

While both Swing’s and Christakis’ studies do merit attention, they are quite limited.  For example, Swing used teacher rating reports to assess whether children had problems paying attention, if they interrupted classmate’s work, if they had trouble staying on task, or showed problems in other areas related to inattention. Teacher reports typically vary over time and from teacher to teacher. They are also highly subjective. To account for this, Swing had more than one teacher rate the children and that the ratings tended to be in agreement.

The greatest flaw in this research is that Swing did not account for content, i.e. what were the students watching or playing? Were the students watching educational TV or playing educational games? Were they playing race car games? Shooting games? Were they playing problem solving games?  Were the games fast paced? Slow? Did they require reasoning skills? We’ll never know and that’s problematic because it leaves so many questions unanswered. As we are what we eat, we are what we stimulate ourselves with.

"These media aren’t going away," Christakis said. "We do have to find ways to manage them appropriately."  On this I can agree. Limiting time to the AAP recommendations is prudent parenting.

If I told you that women who received only basic education were 130 % more likely to have a child on ADHD medication than women with university degrees, you’d see a link, wouldn’t you? 

Well, that’s what a  study published this month in Acta Paediatrica found.  That implies that nearly half of the serious cases of ADHD  in children are closely tied to social factors. The study reveals that factors like single parenting and poor maternal education were directly tied to ADHD medication use.

While we know that a genetic propensity likely exists, the human brain develops based on a complex interplay between nature and nurture; between genetic endowment (nature) and environment/social factors (nurture). Epigenetic theory tries to explain this relationship.

Curiously, few large-scale studies have tried to determine the impact of social and family influences on ADHD. Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden assessed data on 1.16 million school children and examined the health histories of nearly 8,000 Swedish-born kids, aged six to 19, who had taken ADHD medication.

"We tracked their record through other registers … to determine a number of other factors," said lead author Anders Hjern.

Here’s what the researchers found:

• Living in a single parent family increased the chances of being on ADHD medication by more than 50 percent.
• A family on welfare upped the odds of medication use by 135%.
• Boys were three times more likely to be on medication than girls.
• Social dynamics affected both sexes equally.

"Almost half of the cases could be explained by the socioeconomic factors included in our analysis, clearly demonstrating that these are potent predictors of ADHD-medication in Swedish school children," Hjern said.

It’s clear that this study found a link between socioeconomic factors and ADHD medication use/diagnosis. Other US studies have found that minority children and children of low socioeconomic status were more likely to receive ADHD medication.

Factors like low income and diminished quality time are more common in single-parent families. These typically lead to stressors like family conflict and a lack of social support, Hjern said.

While more research must be done, one has to ask, is medication the answer to social stressors like lack of time and money? Sounds too silly to ask, but it seems that our answer, ridiculously, is a resounding, YES!

We are the masters of our lives. We can make significant personal changes, but we must have the tools to do so. That’s why I began Play Attention (www.playattention.com) years ago.

A study performed in the Netherlands and published in the BJOG ( British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology) reveals that  the common drugs used to treat hypertension in pregnancy may affect child functional development.

The Dutch researchers investigated a Labetalol, a drug sometimes given to pregnant women to reduce high blood pressure. They examined the records of 4,000 women from 12 hospitals and tested 202 children.  The children were tested for IQ, concentration level, motor development, and behavior.

The women had high blood pressure that had either been caused by their pregnancy or had been exacerbated by their pregnancy.  They then compared Labetalol to another blood pressure drug, methyldopa. Labetalol was found to be twice as likely to cause ADHD.  When the researchers compared mothers who were given no drugs to the mothers who were prescribed Labetalol , they found that the Labetalol children were four times more likely to have ADHD.

The Dutch scientists did not find that other functional development  differed between the children.

The scientists said they are still developing a hypothesis and confirming a link between the drugs and a baby’s development would require further research.

Professor Philip Steer, BJOG editor-in-chief, said “The results of this study are interesting although they could have occurred by chance. Nonetheless, there are plausible reasons why antihypertensive drugs may be harmful to the functional development of the fetus, with long-term effects. One always has to balance the short-term benefits of a treatment against possible long-term consequences. The results suggest that more large-scale studies looking at the effects of antihypertensive drugs on the baby long-term are warranted.”

The study is limited due to possible bias in data collection. It is similar to other studies which find that pesticides, mercury, lead, allergens, etc., etc., etc., are the culprits. The bottom line is that there nothing conclusive here. More investigation is needed.

The journal Pediatrics reports in its June issue that children exposed to organophosphates, pesticides commonly used on fruits and vegetables, have a higher risk of ADHD. Nearly 40 organophosphate pesticides such as malathion are registered in the United States according to the study’s authors.

"This is a well conducted study," said Dr. Lynn Goldman of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former EPA administrator.

Dr. Marc Weisskopf of the Harvard School of Public Health and others tracked the pesticides’ breakdown products in children’ urine. They studied 1,139 children between the ages of 8 and 15. The team correlated high levels of organophosphates to the development of ADHD. Children with high levels of organophosphates had nearly twice the likelihood of developing ADHD compared to children without traces of the chemicals. The study’s conclusions were based on data from the general United States population. This means that pesticides may cause neurological changes even at common levels found in the average child’s environment. This would include household pesticides as well as those used on farms.

"There is growing concern that these pesticides may be related to ADHD," said Weisskopf. "What this paper specifically highlights is that this may be true even at low concentrations."

Weisskopf also said that previous research indicated  organophosphates had been linked to attention problems and impulsivity although it is unclear how.

Organophosphates actually refers to a group of insecticides or nerve agents that were initially designed for chemical warfare. They target the nervous system of insects or humans (neurotoxic). They came into vogue as pesticides when they were found to degrade quickly after exposure to air, sunlight, and soil.

Although the researchers had no way to determine the source of the breakdown products they found, Weisskopf said the most likely culprits were pesticides and insecticides used on produce and indoors.

"That’s a very strong association that, if true, is of very serious concern," said Weisskopf. "These are widely used pesticides."

The study shows a strong correlation, but not a definitive connection. In other words, this type of study cannot conclusively determine that pesticides cause ADHD.  It does warrant further study.

CropLife America (www.croplifeamerica.org) who represents the developers, manufacturers, formulators and distributors of plant science solutions released the following statement after this article was published:

May 16, 2010

WASHINGTON, DC – CropLife America understands that ADHD is a serious disorder that affects many families, and fully supports continuous study to help better understand its cause. However, our review of the published journal story in "Pediatrics," which makes summary of the study, leads us to believe much more research is needed to ascertain if there is a direct link between exposure to organophosphate pesticides and the development of ADHD in children. All crop protection products are extensively reviewed by regulatory agencies before approval for market use. Many scientific factors are examined by government pesticide regulators, based on extensive laboratory testing, all of which are intended to guarantee safety for the environment and people, including children. The class of crop protection compound that is the subject of this study has been approved and registered by the U.S. EPA, and when used according to the label, the EPA has determined it to be safe.

"A good washing of fruits and vegetables before one eats them would definitely help a lot," Weisskopf said.

To be honest, add pesticides to lead, mercury, allergens, thimerosol, etc. The list goes on and on and the research is essentially the same as Weisskopf’s. Could it be a combination of factors? Of chemicals? Of genetics? We don’t know. It’s important to remember that knowing the cause does not necessarily affect the solution. What we do now, how we manage, cope, and guide are vital.

Research tells us that during the summer, the average student loses one to three month’s math and reading gains made over the prior year. Academic losses are so common among students that educators have given the phenomena a name: Summer Brain Drain.

Summer Brain Drain may even be worse for ADHD students already having trouble at school.

Going to school daily provides schedules and routines. The summer break means those routines aren’t there. Expectations are lowered or relaxed. Even sleep schedules are often totally abandoned.

Unfortunately, exercise is often replaced with computer time, watching movies, or playing video games with friends. That’s a bad idea. While there’s nothing wrong with playing video games or watching movies, sedentary activity must always be balanced with exercise. This is especially important for an ADHD student. 

I’ve included some specific articles that approach this topic from varying perspectives. Enjoy and gain the benefits this summer!

Children with ADHD benefit from time outdoors enjoying nature

(http://www.news.uiuc.edu/NEWS/04/0827adhd.html)

News Bureau at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from May 15 through June 8. — Kids with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) should spend some quality after-school hours and weekend time outdoors enjoying nature, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The payoff for this “treatment” of children 5 to 18 years old, who participated in a nationwide study, was a significant reduction of symptoms. The study appears in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

“The advantage for green outdoor activities was observed among children living in different regions of the United States and among children living in a range of settings, from rural to large city environments,” wrote co-authors Frances E. Kuo and Andrea Faber Taylor. “Overall, our findings indicate that exposure to ordinary natural settings in the course of common after-school and weekend activities may be widely effective in reducing attention deficit symptoms in children.”

ADHD is a neurological disorder that affects some 2 million school-aged children, as well as up to 2 to 4 percent of adults, in the United States. Those with ADHD often face serious consequences, such as problems in school and relationships, depression, substance abuse and on-the-job difficulties.

“These findings are exciting,” said Kuo, a professor in the departments of natural resources and environmental sciences and of psychology at Illinois.

“I think we’re on the track of something really important, something that could affect a lot of lives in a substantial way,” she said. “We’re on the trail of a potential treatment for a disorder that afflicts one of every 14 children – that’s one or two kids in every classroom.”

If clinical trials and additional research confirm the value of exposure to nature for ameliorating ADHD, daily doses of “green time” might supplement medications and behavioral approaches to ADHD, the authors suggest in their conclusion.

Kuo and Faber Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher who specializes in children’s environments and behavior, recruited the parents of 322 boys and 84 girls, all diagnosed with ADHD, through ads in major newspapers and the Web site of Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Parents were interviewed by means of the Web and asked to report how their children performed after participating in a wide range of activities. Some activities were conducted inside, others in outdoor places without much greenery, such as parking lots and downtown areas, and others in relatively natural outdoor settings such as a tree-lined street, back yard or park.

The researchers found that symptoms were reduced most in green outdoor settings, even when the same activities were compared across different settings.

“In each of 56 different comparisons, green outdoor activities received more positive ratings than did activities taking place in other settings, and this difference was significant or marginally significant in 54 of the 56 analyses,” Kuo said. “The findings are very consistent.”

The two researchers have been pursuing the ADHD issue as an extension of a long line of previous research they’ve conducted on the nature-attention connection among the general population in mostly urban settings.

“The medications for ADHD that are currently available work for most kids, but not all,” Kuo said. “They often have serious side effects. Who wants to give their growing child a drug that kills their appetite day after day and, night after night, makes it hard for them to get a decent night’s rest? Not to mention the stigma and expense of medication.”

Simply using nature, Kuo said, “may offer a way to help manage ADHD symptoms that is readily available, doesn’t have any stigma associated with it, doesn’t cost anything, and doesn’t have any side effects – except maybe splinters!”

There are a number of exciting possible ways in which “nature treatments” could supplement current treatments, she said.

Spending time in ordinary “urban nature” – a tree-lined street, a green yard or neighborhood park – may offer additional relief from ADHD symptoms when medications aren’t quite enough. Some kids might be able to substitute a “green dose” for their afternoon medication, allowing them to get a good night’s sleep.

“A green dose could be a lifesaver for the 10 percent of children whose symptoms don’t respond to medication, who are just stuck with the symptoms,” Kuo said. As Kuo and Faber Taylor wrote, a dose could be as simple as “a greener route for the walk to school, doing classwork or homework at a window with a relatively green view, or playing in a green yard or ball field at recess and after school.”

The National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council, U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service supported the project.

Exercise Improves Learning and Memory
Chalk up another benefit for regular exercise. Investigators from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) have found that voluntary running boosts the growth of new nerve cells and improves learning and memory in adult mice.
"Until recently it was thought that the growth of new neurons, or neurogenesis, did not occur in the adult mammalian brain," said Terrence Sejnowski, an HHMI investigator at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies. "But we now have evidence for it, and it appears that exercise helps this happen."
USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-03-26-adhd-treatment_x.htm)

ADHD treatment is getting a workout

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-03-26-adhd-treatment_x.htm
Doctors haven’t done many definitive studies about exercise and ADHD, says David Goodman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. But Goodman says it makes sense that working out would help people cope with the condition. Studies show that exercise increases levels of two key brain chemicals — dopamine and norepinephrine — that help people focus.

"Your cognitive function is probably better for one to three hours after exercise," Goodman says. "The difficulty is that by the next day, the effect has worn off."

If kids could exercise strenuously three to five times a day, they might not need medications at all, says John Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Ratey is so intrigued by the question that he’s writing a book about how exercise can reduce symptoms of ADHD or at least help patients cope.

Team sports might help children with ADHD in several ways, says James Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at Boston’s MassGeneral Hospital for Children. Children with the condition benefit from following a regular schedule. Coaches who lead kids through structured exercises also might help build concentration and organizational skills.

A Nottingham University research team in the United Kingdom found that the brains of children with ADHD appear to respond to immediate rewards in the same way as they do to medication. Their research was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

“Our study suggests that both types of intervention [medicine and immediate reward/reinforcement] may have much in common in terms of their effect on the brain,” said Professor Chris Hollis, the lead investigator of  the study.

The research team used an EEG (electroencephalograph) to measure the brain activity of children as they played a computer game that provided extra points for less impulsive behavior.

The researchers devised a computer space game which rewarded the ADHD children when they caught aliens of specific colors  while avoiding aliens of designated colors. The game design actually tested the children’s ability to resist the impulse to grab the wrong colored aliens.

To test whether immediate reward/reinforcement made a difference, one iteration of the game rewarded the children fivefold for catching the right alien and penalized them fivefold for catching the wrong one.  All of this was done while activity in different parts of their brains was monitored with an EEG.

Hollis found that the immediate rewards helped the children perform better at the game. This was verified by the EEG which  revealed that both medication and immediate reward/reinforcement were "normalizing" brain activity in the same regions.

Many parents of ADHD children are aware that giving a reward to an ADHD child a week after their good behavior is insignificant to that child. ADHD children respond better to immediate reward, not delayed reward.

"Although medication and behavior therapy appear to be two very different approaches of treating ADHD, our study suggests that both types of intervention may have much in common in terms of their effect on the brain. Both help normalize similar components of brain function and improve performance,"  said Hollis.

"We know that children with ADHD respond disproportionately less well to delayed rewards – this could mean that in the ‘real world’ of the classroom or home, the neural effects of behavioral approaches using reinforcement and rewards may be less effective."

It’s obvious that providing immediate rewards/reinforcement 24 hours a day and 7 days a week would be impractical and impossible. But what does this research tell us? It tells us that if we are to train an ADHD student, feedback, reward, and reinforcement need to be immediate if we are to get their brain to rewire.

We at Play Attention have known this for many years. This is why we integrated immediate feedback/reinforcement for attention training, cognitive training, memory training, and behavioral shaping by using feedback technology. We patented this method years ago because of its inherent strength. While we knew this was the best way to achieve success, we feel research like this rather reinforces our approach. It’s about time the world caught up!

Science has determined that the brain is not a static entity, but a highly adaptive organ. It constantly changes due to environment and stimulation. Can a loving, kind, nurturing parent actually affect an inattentive, impulsive child?

Dr. Oriana Linares, lead author of a study appearing in the March issue of Pediatrics says that nurturing and kindness play significant roles in reducing inattention and impulsivity. Linares is an associate professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Linares and her colleagues studied the lives of 252 children who had been placed in foster care because of abuse or neglect. All of the children exhibited inattention and impulsivity. Over the course of four years, Linares and her researchers gathered information from biological parents, foster parents, classroom teachers and the children themselves.

"Were they always on the go? Always overactive? Climbing on things? Couldn’t stop? Had to have things now? Inattention, forgetting where things were?" Those were some of their questions, Linares said.

Both biological and foster parents confirmed that hyperactivity and inattention improved after the first year in a new foster home. However, teachers did not necessarily see that same results at school. This may suggest that the setting and relationship with the caregiver are influential. 

Most importantly, Linares noted that, "Children whose parents reported higher parental warmth — how much do the parents like the child, how much affection the parent reports towards the child, how much time they spend together — showed fewer ADHD symptoms while children whose parents reported hostility — being annoyed at the child, thinking the child a burden, being angry at the child — showed more ADHD symptoms."

Linares also found that children who were moved more frequently had more pronounced ADHD symptoms.

"And we’re talking about symptoms associated with a disorder that has a proven biological component to it so it is important to understand that, even with these types of symptoms, the social environment of the child matters tremendously," Linares said.

Linares’ study, like others, strongly correlates nurturing, kindness, and love to a healthier, more attentive, less impulsive brain.

While we do not get a manual to teach us to parent, it is advisable to develop strategies that will promote a more attentive, less impulsive child. This is not necessarily easy as ADHD children often try our patience to the extreme. However, being a nurturing, loving parent coupled with a consistent, structured environment can produce incredibly good outcomes. Nurture, kindness, love, consistency, and structure are your greatest allies as an ADHD parent.

PART THREE OF THREE

Play Attention vs. commercial video games
It’s clear that games whether video, computer, board, etc. can teach. However, it’s also clear that chronic play of the most popular video game titles can be detrimental to an individual with ADHD.

As a parent or professional, it’s imperative that one asks:

• Who are these games addressing?
• What is the purpose of playing?
• What is it that is being taught?
• Do these games provide the 3 catalysts needed for brain growth –  attention, challenge, and deliberate practice?

Our concern is with students that have attentional challenges. That’s who we address with Play Attention.

The purpose of playing Play Attention’s games is to learn skills that students with attentional challenges often have yet to acquire. 

Play Attention is not entertainment. It is an instructional tool that teaches discriminatory processing, memory, motor skills, visual tracking, time on-task, and attention stamina. You might consider it edutainment. That’s a term coined to denote a combination of entertainment and education.

A behavior shaping module is built into Play Attention’s core. It’s there to mitigate or extinguish behavior like fidgeting, calling out, distractibility, etc.  Since we hold patents on the integration of cognitive skills with behavioral shaping, no one else can do what we do in one package.

I’m often asked why I didn’t structure Play Attention’s games like the intense entertainment that Xbox or Play Station games  offer (those names are trademarks of Microsoft and Sony Corp. respectively).  The most popular games produced for those systems are incredibly visually intense and graphically frenetic. If one has a true attention problem, a hallmark is one’s ability to pay attention to visually intense, graphically frenetic things. Commonly, ADHD individuals can be entertained by Xbox or Play Station games for hours on end never becoming disinterested or bored.

As an educator, I knew it was important to develop a game with a purpose. Each game in Play Attention is played for a purpose: to learn a skill. Every game provides the 3 catalysts necessary from brain growth. The mind is the mouse or joystick as the user’s mind (attention) controls the action. Active engagement is required to make the games work, and that’s challenging. True learning can occur because we implemented goals, feedback, and a deliberate learning model within our core.

So, when asked why I didn’t create Play Attention like Grand Theft Auto or Halo, I respond, “I don’t think it’s responsible to allow your child to play games that teach nothing, likely diminish function in the frontal lobes as research has demonstrated, and simply entertain with no purpose. I create games that challenge, teach, and provide success.”

When I hear parents complain, “Oh, he’ll get bored. I don’t know if I can get him to do it,” I know it’s a clear underestimation of their child’s capacity. All children get bored. When you hear, “Mom, I’m bored,” do you jump to your feet to entertain them? Do you whip out a DVD that you’ve squirreled away for just such a moment? You’d be surprised how many parents will just to keep from hearing their child’s moaning or complaining. That’s just poor parenting. Period.

Set the bar higher. If your child wants to be on the baseball team, he’ll practice for hours with the coach. If your child wants to be on the swim team, she’ll swim many, many laps. That’s boring, but they do it anyway. ADHD and all. Why? Because they see the benefit. It’s not fun to practice throwing to second base over and over again. Nor is it fun to swim laps, but they do it because they perceive the payoff to be bigger than themselves. And that’s your job as parent. Get them to see the bigger picture. Do they want better grades, more friends, more success? That’s what we’re offering. It’s a truly happy medium between entertainment and learning.

I once told my mother I was bored. I was 6 years old. She barely looked up from her book and said, “Go outside and play.”

I said, “That’s boring.”

She said, “Use you mind, Peter. It’s a good mind. Find something to do with it.”

She was right. I haven’t been bored in 45 years. I learned to play and grow.

PART TWO OF THREE

Entertainment vs. learning
Entertainment is usually a passive act that includes an activity which provides a distraction to everyday events or provides amusement. A good example of entertainment is watching a movie or concert. However, one may also actively participate in recreational entertainment  such as playing video games or sports. One does not participate in an entertaining activity to be educated. That is far from the goal of entertainment. In fact, we participate in entertainment to be relieved of having to work, having to learn, or having to be actively engaged for those purposes. We seek entertainment for fun and pleasure.

Entertainment is a vast industry. The modern American video game industry made about $18.85 billion on video-game hardware, software, and accessories in 2007. That’s nearly twice what movie theaters made and triple what the video game industry made in 2000. Most authorities on video games estimate that 70 to 80 percent of boys and approximately 20 percent of girls play video games daily.

Learning is on the other end of the spectrum from entertainment. In order to learn, we need attention, challenge, and deliberate practice. We need to be actively engaged. To apply the mind with the intent of long-term retention, assimilation, and application of new information. This implies both effort and commitment. While we may employ some of these elements, the purpose is far different in a learning environment. The purpose of learning in Star Trek: Bridge Commander is to keep the ship from exploding by using the controls correctly.  Learning is there to benefit your game play.  While this takes some reasoning and trial and error, is this useful in the classroom or at the office? Not likely. It’s not likely transferrable or to generalize either unless your child’s job is commanding Star Fleet.

If I may paraphrase the late martial artist and film legend Bruce Lee, you cannot learn to swim by kicking your legs and stroking with your arms on land. You have to jump in the water. You cannot learn to run a marathon by jogging around the track. 

In other words, if we want to learn something, it has to be taught with a purpose or aim, and we have to practice it deliberately to improve. If we closely examine what video games our spouse, child, or clients are playing, then we might just be alarmed at the violence, the lack of humanity, and gratuitous sex involved.

The most popular video games are those that are visually intense and graphically frenetic. It’s important to mention here that paying attention to visually stimulating and frenetic activity is another hallmark of an ADHD individual. Offer a 3-ring circus and their brain is quite capable of attending to it. Ask them to clean their room, a much less stimulating activity, and it’s very difficult. This predisposition towards highly stimulating activities seems to involve the brain’s reward and gratification systems as well as its processing and other regulatory systems.

Thus, a high stimulation Xbox or Play Station game is quite satisfying; ADHD individuals can hyperfocus on these games for hours on end. What does that teach? Research tells us that people who play these games do learn visual recognition skills, i.e. they can rapidly determine the number of opposing characters on screen far faster than the average human being. So, if the only thing they’re going to be is a fighter pilot, then these games might be suitable.

Other research tells us that if one chronically plays these games (chronically would be classified as one hour or more per day), one is more likely to report lower grades at school, diminished attention at school, and a greater probability of being addicted to these games or the Internet itself. Good Japanese research also noted that entertaining, highly stimulating video games that involve little else than pointing and shooting can lower both the metabolic rate and EEG in the frontal lobes of the brain. The frontal lobes, among other capacities, govern attention, aggression, and impulsivity. This is important to know especially if you have an ADHD person in your household using these games.

It seems that most ADHD children and adults are prewired to pay attention to overly stimulation things. That seems to be a hallmark of the trait. They frequently become hyperfocused on them for hours at a time. Taking these games away is probably not practical. However, limiting play time is quite sensible.

If one is to learn skills, techniques, or methods that will strengthen the brain, then the video game must be quite different than the Xbox or Play Station most popular list.

Upcoming, part 3, Play Attention vs. off the shelf video games.