UCF study: Hyperactivity enables children with ADHD to ...(sing poster checklists can help children...),Health

"When they are doing homework, let them fidget, stand up or chew gum," he said. "Unless their behavior is destructive, severely limiting their activity could be counterproductive."

Rapport's findings may also explain why stimulant medications improve the behavior of most children with ADHD. Those medications improve the physiological arousal of children with ADHD, increasing their alertness. Previous studies have shown that stimulant medications temporarily improve working memory abilities.

Rapport's research team studied 23 boys, including 12 who were diagnosed with ADHD. Each child took a variety of tests at the UCF Children's Learning Clinic on four consecutive Saturdays. Devices called actigraphs placed on both ankles and the non-dominant hand measured the frequency and intensity of each child's movement 16 times per second. The children were told they were wearing special watches that allowed them to play games.

In the first of the two published studies, the research team demonstrated that children with ADHD have significantly impaired visual and verbal working memory compared with their typically developing peers. In one test, the children were asked to reorder and recall the locations of dots on a computer screen. Compared with their typically developing peers, the children with ADHD performed much worse on that test and on a similar one requiring them to reorder and recall sequences of numbers and letters.

The second study focused on the frequency and intensity of movement by the children while they were taking those two tests.

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