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Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)
Published on: June 12, 2017
Working memory demands impair skill acquisition in children with ADHD
Cynthia L Huang-Pollock1, Sarah L Karalunas
1Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. clh39@psu.edu
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
|February 10, 2010
Summary
Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show impaired automaticity in cognitive skill acquisition when tasks demand high working memory (WM). This deficit was specific to high-WM tasks, not low-WM tasks.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neurodevelopmental Disorders
- Child Psychology
Background:
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with cognitive deficits.
- The role of working memory (WM) load in cognitive skill acquisition for ADHD subtypes is not fully understood.
- Previous research debates whether ADHD involves effortful or automatic cognitive deficits.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate cognitive skill acquisition in children with ADHD under varying working memory (WM) load conditions.
- To compare the primarily inattentive and combined ADHD subtypes with non-ADHD controls.
- To determine if WM load influences the development of automaticity in complex cognitive skills for children with ADHD.
Main Methods:
- Participants included children with primarily inattentive ADHD (n=21), combined ADHD (n=32), and non-ADHD controls (n=48).
- Two cognitive skill acquisition tasks were used: alphabet arithmetic (high WM load) and finger math (lower WM load).
- Tasks were matched for logical structure, design, and discriminatory power, differing primarily in WM demand.
Main Results:
- Children with ADHD exhibited impairments in developing automaticity for the high-WM alphabet arithmetic task.
- No significant impairments in automaticity development were observed for the lower-WM finger math task in children with ADHD.
- Results suggest that WM load is a critical factor in the observed cognitive deficits in ADHD.
Conclusions:
- ADHD-related impairments in cognitive skill acquisition are exacerbated by high working memory demands.
- Findings support the notion that automaticity deficits, particularly under high cognitive load, are relevant to ADHD.
- The study has implications for developing targeted psychoeducational interventions for children with ADHD, considering WM capacity.
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