ADHD: Brain activity in sleep may impact emotional disturbances in children

Sleep consolidates emotional memories in healthy children but not in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

This is the findings of research published May 29 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Alexander Prehn-Kristensen and colleagues from University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein.

The study suggests these deficits in sleep-related emotional processing may exacerbate emotional problems experienced in the daytime by children with ADHD.

Prehn-Kristensen

For the study, healthy adults, healthy children and children with ADHD were shown pictures that had emotional relevance, such as a scary animal, or neutral pictures showing an umbrella or lamp.

Participants were shown pictures in the evening, their brain activity was monitored as they slept, and recollections were tested the following morning.

The researchers found that during sleep, regions of the brain thought to support consolidation of emotional memories were most active in healthy children, less so in healthy adults and least active in children with ADHD.

The study states, "While several studies reported a benefit from sleep with respect to emotional memory in healthy individuals, our results showed for the first time that healthy children outperform healthy adults." 

However, the authors added that this may be, in part, attributable to the child-oriented pictures used as stimuli.

Their results support the idea that frontal brain activity is critically to the consolidation of emotional memory in sleep, and this brain region is also implicated in the emotional symptoms seen in children suffering from ADHD.

The authors add that further studies are needed to confirm whether this function of sleep in forming emotional memories develops with time in adults with ADHD, or whether the dysfunction persists in ADHD sufferers of all ages.

More information: Prehn-Kristensen A, Munz M, Molzow I, Wilhelm I, Wiesner CD, et al. (2013) Sleep Promotes Consolidation of Emotional Memory in Healthy Children but Not in Children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. PLOS ONE 8(5): e65098. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065098

Telling Personal Stories Help Children Develop Emotional Skills

A new study finds that mothers tell better, more emotional stories about past experiences which help children develop their emotional skills.

Credit: © Pavel Losevsky / Fotolia

A new study finds that mothers tell better, more emotional stories about past experiences which help children develop their emotional skills.

The act of talking is not an area where ability is usually considered along gender lines.

However, a new study published in Springer's journal Sex Roles has found subtle differences between the sexes in their story-relating ability and specifically the act of reminiscing.

Widaad Zaman

The research by Widaad Zaman from the University of Central Florida and her colleague Robyn Fivush from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, discusses how these gender differences in parents can affect children's emotional development.

Previous research in this area has concluded that the act of parents reminiscing with their children enables children to interpret experiences and weave together the past, present and future.

There is also evidence that parents elaborate less when talking to sons than daughters.

The primary objective of Zaman's study was to compare the reminiscing styles of mothers and fathers with their pre-school daughters and sons.

This included how they elaborated on the story and the extent to which their children engaged with the story while it was being told.

Robyn Fivush

The researchers studied 42 families where the participating children were between four and five years old.

Parents were asked to reminisce about four past emotional experiences of the child (happy, sad, a conflict with a peer and a conflict with a parent) and two past play interactions they experienced together.

The parents took turns talking to the child on separate visits.

The researchers found that mothers elaborated more when reminiscing with their children than fathers.

Contrary to previous research, however, Zaman's study found no differences in the extent to which either parent elaborated on a story depending on the sex of the child.

Mothers tended to include more emotional terms in the story than fathers, which they then discussed and explained to the child.

This increased maternal engagement has the effect of communicating to the child the importance of their own version, perspective and feelings about the experience.

The authors contend that through their increased interaction with the child, mothers are helping their children work through and talk about their experiences more than fathers, regardless of the type of experience.

This may reflect the mother's efforts to try and help her child deal with difficult emotions, especially about negative experiences, all of which is related to better emotional well-being.

The authors conclude that "these results are intriguing, and a necessary first step to better understanding how parents socialise gender roles to girls and boys through narratives about the past, and how girls and boys may then incorporate these roles into their own narratives and their own lives."

Reference
Gender Differences in Elaborative Parent–Child Emotion and Play Narratives. Sex Roles, 2013; DOI: 10.1007/s11199-013-0270-7

Research Study: Children's songs, clapping games improve motor and cognitive skills

Study: Children's songs, clapping games improve motor and cognitive skills

Children's songs and clapping games can develop a person's motor and cognitive skills even long after childhood, a recent Israeli study suggests.

The study, by Dr. Idit Solkin of Ben-Gurion University's arts faculty, found a direct link between children's songs and clapping games and the development of important skills, both in children and in young adults, including university students.

Study Period
Solkin conducted the study over a period of five years by interviewing school and kindergarten teachers and visiting their classrooms, where she joined the children in singing. Her original goal was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sport.

"This fact explains a natural evolutionary process the children are going through," she said. "The clapping and singing games appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental tool that reflects many of the children's needs - emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up."

Motor and Cognitive Skills
Though the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively - prompting countless parents to obtain a Mozart record or two for their young, just in case - Solkin said that no in-depth study had previously been made of the effect that singing and clapping games have on children's motor and cognitive skills.

"We found that about 20 percent of children in the first, second and third grade take up these songs and demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in such activities," she said. "We found that children who clap and sing write better, with fewer spelling errors and nicer handwriting. Their teachers also believe their social integration is better than that of children who don't take part in these games."

School Study
As part of the study, Solkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in singing and clapping activities over a period of 10 weeks. "Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did," she said.

This finding led Solkin to conclude that singing and clapping games should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.

University Students
She also found that singing and clapping games have a clear effect on adults: University students who filled out her questionnaires reported that after taking up such games, they became more focused and less tense.

"These techniques are associated with childhood, and many adults treat them as a joke," she said. "But once they take them up, they report feeling more alert and in a better mood."