How do extra tasks affect walking in children with ADHD?
Both children with ADHD and typically developing children walk more slowly and with more irregular steps when they have to complete a mental or physical task at the same time.
Source
Gait in Children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in a Dual-Task Paradigm
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How do extra tasks affect walking in children with ADHD?
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30 children with ADHD participated in the study
The sample included in this study comprised 30 children with ADHD (25 boys and 5 girls, M age = 10.9 years, age range: 7–13 years, without or off medication) and 28 typically developing controls (25 boys and 3 girls, M age = 10.8 years, age range: 7–13 years) and has been described in a previous study in detail (Manicolo et al., ).
five digits were presented in the cognitive memory task
The cognitive task comprised listening to and memorizing digits (digits) (Lindenberger et al., ; Leitner et al., ), where children heard a list comprising five digits presented in a randomized order from a computer over loudspeakers that were installed at the front left and front right corner of the laboratory.
What they did
The researchers compared 30 children with ADHD to 28 typically developing children, all between 7 and 13 years old. Participants walked across a specialized pressure-sensitive mat under different conditions: walking normally, walking while memorizing a list of five digits, or walking while buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt. The researchers measured walking speed and step-to-step consistency across these conditions.
What they found
Adding any extra task caused children in both groups to walk more slowly and with greater step variability, but the two groups did not differ from each other in their walking patterns during these double-task scenarios. However, the physical buttoning task caused a greater drop in walking performance than the mental memory task for all children. Additionally, children with ADHD recalled fewer numbers than the control group during the combined walking and memory task.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The study did not include children diagnosed with both ADHD and developmental coordination disorder, which limits how well these findings apply to the large portion of children who have both conditions. The wide age range of 7 to 13 years might mask age-related differences in how children adapt to multitasking, since walking and cognitive control develop rapidly during these years. Furthermore, the memory task used was relatively simple and did not heavily test higher-level mental planning, meaning more complex mental tasks might produce different results.
Key terms
- Dual-task paradigm
- An experimental setup where participants are asked to perform two tasks simultaneously to examine how they compete for brain power.
- Gait variability
- The stride-to-stride fluctuations in walking that show how automatic, regular, and stable a person's walking pattern is.
- Executive functions
- A set of top-down mental processes, like working memory and attention control, that help people plan, focus, and multi-task.
- Central executive
- The component of working memory responsible for controlling attention and coordinating activities between different memory systems.
- Multiple-resource model
- A theory suggesting that two tasks will interfere with each other more if they require the same types of physical or mental resources.
- Spatiotemporal gait measures
- Physical characteristics of walking that relate to space and time, such as walking speed, step length, and step timing.
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Quiz yourself
In single-task walking, which specific gait parameters differed significantly between children with ADHD and controls?
Common questions
Did children with ADHD perform worse at walking while multitasking than the control group?
No, both groups showed a similar decline in walking quality when multitasking. However, children with ADHD did perform worse on the actual memory task while walking, recalling fewer numbers than their peers.
Why did the motor task affect walking more than the memory task?
According to the multiple-resource model, both walking and buttoning a shirt require physical movement and spatial coordination. Because they draw from the same pool of motor resources, they interfere with each other more than walking and listening to numbers.
Were the children with ADHD on medication during this study?
Most of the children with ADHD who normally took stimulant medication stopped taking it at least 24 hours before the walking tests, so the results reflect their behavior off medication.
How was the walking measured?
The children walked across a special 701-centimeter-long electronic mat called GAITRite, which has integrated pressure sensors to measure precise details of each step.
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