ADHD children make poor decisions due to less differentiated learning processes

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common psychiatric disorders among school children. Pupils with ADHD often make poorer decisions than their unaffected classmates.

Researchers from the University of Zurich now discovered that different learning and decision-making mechanisms are responsible for these behaviors, and localized the underlying impairments in the brain.

Which shirt do we put on in the morning? Do we drive to work or take the train? From which takeaway joint do we want to buy lunch?

We make hundreds of different decisions every day. Even if these often only have a minimal impact, it is extremely important for our long-term personal development to make decisions that are as optimal as possible.

People with ADHD often find this difficult, however. They are known to make impulsive decisions, often choosing options which bring a prompt but smaller reward instead of making a choice that yields a greater reward later on down the line.

Researchers from the University Clinics for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Zurich, now reveal that different decision-making processes are responsible for such suboptimal choices and that these take place in the middle of the frontal lobe.

Mathematical models help to understand the decision-making processes
In the study, the decision-making processes in 40 young people with and without ADHD were examined.

Lying in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to record the brain activity, the participants played a game where they had to learn which of two images carried more frequent rewards.

To understand the impaired mechanisms of participants with ADHD better, learning algorithms which originally stemmed from the field of artificial intelligence were used to evaluate the data.

These mathematical models help to understand the precise learning and decision-making mechanisms better.

"We were able to demonstrate that young people with ADHD do not inherently have difficulties in learning new information; instead, they evidently use less differentiated learning patterns, which is presumably why sub-optimal decisions are often made", says first author Tobias Hauser.

Multimodal imaging affords glimpses inside the brain
To study the brain processes that triggered these impairments, the authors used multimodal imaging methods, where the participants were examined using a combined measurement of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to record the electrical activity and the blood flow in the brain.

It became apparent that participants with ADHD exhibit an altered functioning in the medial prefrontal cortex, a region in the middle of the frontal lobe.

This part of the brain is heavily involved in decision-making processes, especially if you have to choose between several options, and in learning from errors.

Although a change in activity in this region was already discovered in other contexts for ADHD, the Zurich researchers were now also able to pinpoint the precise moment of this impairment, which already occurred less than half a second after a feedback, i.e. at a very early stage.

Psychologist Tobias Hauser, who is now researching at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, is convinced that the results fundamentally improve our understanding of the mechanisms of impaired decision-making behaviour in people with ADHD.

The next step will be to study the brain messenger substances. "If our findings are confirmed, they will provide key clues as to how we might be able to design therapeutic interventions in future," explains Hauser.

More information: Tobias U. Hauser, Reto Iannaccone, Juliane Ball, Christoph Mathys, Daniel Brandeis, Susanne Walitza & Silvia Brem: Role of Medial Prefrontal "Cortex in Impaired Decision Making in Juvenile Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder," in: JAMA Psychiatry, DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.1093

Messy children make for better learners

Don't let the mess in the high chair bother you. New research from the University of Iowa shows kids who get messy in the high chair are learning. 

Credit: Tim Schoon, University of Iowa

Attention, parents: The messier your child gets while playing with food in the high chair, the more he or she is learning.

Researchers at the University of Iowa studied how 16-month-old children learn words for nonsolid objects, from oatmeal to glue.

Previous research has shown that toddlers learn more readily about solid objects because they can easily identify them due to their unchanging size and shape but oozy, gooey, runny stuff? Not so much.

New research shows that changes if you put toddlers in a setting they know well, such as shoving stuff in their mouths.

In those instances, word learning increases, because children at that age are "used to seeing nonsolid things in this context, when they're eating," says Larissa Samuelson, associate professor in psychology at the UI who has worked for years on how children learn to associate words with objects.

"And, if you expose them to these things when they're in a highchair, they do better. They're familiar with the setting and that helps them remember and use what they already know about nonsolids."

In a paper published in the journal Developmental Science, Samuelson and her team at the UI tested their idea by exposing 16-month-olds to 14 nonsolid objects, mostly food and drinks such as applesauce, pudding, juice, and soup.

They presented the items and gave them made-up words, such as "dax" or "kiv." A minute later, they asked the children to identify the same food in different sizes or shapes.

The task required the youngsters to go beyond relying simply on shape and size and to explore what the substances were made of to make the correct identification and word choice.

Not surprisingly, many children gleefully dove into this task by poking, prodding, touching, feeling, eating—and yes, throwing—the nonsolids in order to understand what they were and make the correct association with the hypothetical names.

The toddlers who interacted the most with the foods—parents, interpret as you want—were more likely to correctly identify them by their texture and name them, the study determined.

For example, imagine you were a 16-month-old gazing at a cup of milk and a cup of glue. How would you tell the difference by simply looking?

"It's the material that makes many nonsolids," Samuelson notes, "and how children name them."

The setting matters, too, it seems. Children in a high chair were more apt to identify and name the food than those in other venues, such as seated at a table, the researchers found.

"It turns out that being in a high chair makes it more likely you'll get messy, because kids know they can get messy there," says Samuelson, the senior author on the paper.

The authors say the exercise shows how children's behaviour, environment (or setting) and exploration help them acquire an early vocabulary—learning that is linked to better later cognitive development and functioning.

"It may look like your child is playing in the high chair, throwing things on the ground, and they may be doing that, but they are getting information out of (those actions)," Samuelson contends.

"And, it turns out, they can use that information later. That's what the high chair did. Playing with these foods there actually helped these children in the lab, and they learned the names better."

"It's not about words you know, but words you're going to learn," Samuelson adds.

Lynn Perry, who helped design the study and analyze the data as part of her doctoral studies at the UI, is the first author on the paper.

Johanna Burdinie, who was an UI undergraduate during the project, is a contributing author.

Scottish Teenagers with Learning Difficulties make Computer game in four hours

A Dundee computer game maker has worked with young people with learning disabilities to create a new game in just four hours.

It was designed as part of efforts by designers Guerilla Tea to dispel myths about working in the sector.

Working with Enable Scotland, the programmers tried to encourage the youths to consider careers in gaming.

The collaboration resulted in the game "On the Freerun", which has now been released for download.

The game features a "freerunner" called Norman who sprints across roof tops trying to avoid hostile elderly people.

Guerilla Tea, who are firm of game designers made up of graduates from Scotland's Abertay University, said the project was developed after working with Enable Scotland's East Renfrewshire Local Area Coordination Team.

The Dundee-based company said it was the first of its kind for the games industry.

Charlie Czerkawski

Career for all
Charlie Czerkawski, from the firm, said: "We wanted to show the kids and the adults, the concepts of making a game, the software, some of the processes of game development and at the end have a game with their names on the credits."

"We were really promoting that game making is a viable career option, for anybody. It is certainly not cut off or elitist."

The project was run through two workshops; the first saw the group of young people develop the concept, while the actual game was created in the second.

Those youths interested in the programming side of game making were given support from one of the company's coders, while the more artistically inclined helped develop the graphics.

Czerkawski said: "There were a lot of good ideas, we collated them all into one and by the end of the day we had the concept.

"We put this idea together and built a basic frame work and were able to bring it together with the youths' ideas and artwork.

"It was remarkable; the game was actually put together in four hours, which is a record time."

Dougie Purves, Service Leader with Enable, said: "We identified that many of the young people we engage with have an interest in the games industry and were really keen to give them the chance to find out more about this field and the training and employment opportunities that exist in Scotland.

"This was a unique experience for everyone who took part. The feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive. We are so grateful to Guerilla Tea for making this possible."

Mr Czerkawski said he felt the experience may have sparked an interest in game making among several of the teenagers.

He added: "Some of them really took to it very quickly; with just a bit of practice and maybe a Christmas present in the form of software, some of them could really go ahead and at the very least make a good hobby out of it, if not more."