The Adventures of Fundi Intervention Based on the Cognitive and Emotional Processing in Attention Deficit Hyperactive...

Many children with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) are known to have executive dysfunction, which weakens their abilities to learn and behave in daily living. This protocol describes the methodology that is required for the intervention (psychotherapy) based on planning, attention, successive, and simultaneous (PASS theory) cognitive processing and fear emotional processing. It provides guiding principles and practical recommendations. A disproportionately high level of fear (dysregulation) increases the vulnerability for dysfunction in learning and behavior. We explain the interplay between emotion and cognition at the neurological level. A go/no go task (The Adventures of Fundi), which involves decision making, is administered in a PC- mode to a sample of 66 ADHD subjects. The Adventures of Fundi, a computer program, was constructed to induce successive or simultaneous processing when involving the training of planning and selective attention. It aims to improve the executive function with planning and selective attention. If executive function improves, learning improves, and behavior ameliorates. After intervention over 6 months, remission was achieved in 70% of subjects. The instructor encourages the use of appropriate strategies and points out the ways in which the strategies can be useful in finding the solution to the problem (go/no go). The emphasis is not on rehearsing and adult instructed verbal sequence. The verbalization may reveal the conscious verbalized strategy to solve a task that is not really the strategy being unconsciously used in that case. A self-verbal report is unreliable. This is an inductive learning rather than deductive rule-learning approach central to cognitive PASS training. This inductive training has proved to produce not only near transfer but also far transfer. Noncognitive factors (emotional factors) must be considered to maximize the benefit of cognitive training. Indirect and metaphorical communication considers the emotional factor.