Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterised by a range of behaviours that include excessive motor activity and distractibility. Motor coordination problem is often a feature. It is therefore likely that motor control mechanisms are implicated in ADHD and then executive function associated with it. After a literature review on the correlation between cognition and movement (chapter 1), the novel VSWM (chapter 2) and sequential learning (chapter 3) tasks are introduced. Based on the typical Corsi tapping task, participants were instructed to either move their hand to the stimulus presented on the computer screen or tap the keyboard when they saw it, while trying to remember the location and order of the stimuli. The results suggest that movements deteriorate VSWM in both ADHD and control groups (chapter 2) while they had a tendency to improve learning performance in healthy but not ADHD participants (chapter 3). It was posited that the results from both tasks could have been influenced by differences in the ability to concentrate on the task and difficulty in controlling movements. Two other experiments were used to test this assumption and eliminate any confounds from the memory and learning tasks. The results from chapter 4, which looks at divided attention, indicate a significantly higher response rate in the ADHD compared to the healthy participants, while showing no significant deficit in fine motor but rather on the attentional control (chapter 5) in ADHD participants. These findings are summarised in chapter 6 and discussed in terms of 1) the relationship between movement and cognitive function, 2) the causation of the VSWM deficit in ADHD, and 3) the potential use these tasks may have in a clinical setting as an assessment tool or cognitive training program for people with ADHD.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:707506 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Opasanon, Nattaporn |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=231661 |
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