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In an effort to better identify the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, researchers have vouched for the addition of computer simulations to cognitive testing methods, to assess the presence and severity behavioral problems in children.
Cognitive testing in ADHD is used to identify a variety of symptoms and deficits, including selective attention, poor working memory, altered time perception, difficulty maintaining attention, and impulsive behavior.
According to researchers at Ohio State University, for ADHD, however, these cognitive tests often do not capture the complexity of symptoms.
The advent of computational psychiatry – by comparing a computer-simulated model of normal brain processes to dysfunctional processes seen in tests – could be an important adjunct to the ADHD diagnostic process, the researchers reported in a new review published in the journal Psychological Bulletin.
Children with ADHD take more time to make decisions when performing tasks than children without ADHD, and tests have relied on average response times to explain the difference.
But there are subtleties to this dysfunction that a computer model could help identify, providing information clinicians, parents, and teachers could use to make life easier for children with ADHD.
“We can use models to simulate the decision-making process and see how decision-making unfolds over time – and better understand why children with ADHD take longer to make decisions,” said Nadja Ging- Jehli, main author of the journal. .
The research team looked at 50 studies of cognitive testing for ADHD and described how three common types of computer models might complement these tests.
The researchers offer recommendations for testing and clinical practice to achieve three primary goals: to better characterize ADHD and any accompanying mental health diagnosis, such as anxiety and depression, to improve treatment outcomes, and potentially predict which ones. children will “lose” the diagnosis of ADHD as adults.
The review also identified a complicating factor for ADHD research in the future ?? a wider range of externally obvious symptoms as well as subtle features that are difficult to detect with most common testing methods.
Understanding that children with ADHD have so many biological differences suggests that a single task-based test is not enough to make a meaningful diagnosis of ADHD, the researchers said.
“ADHD is not just the restless, restless child in a chair. It is also the child who is inattentive because of the reverie. Even though this child is more introverted and does not express as many symptoms as a child with hyperactivity, this does not mean that the child is not in pain, ”explained Ging-Jehli.
Daydreaming is especially common among girls, who aren’t enrolled in ADHD studies almost as often as boys, she said.
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