Listening to music may not distract children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), on the other hand, it helps them, a team of researchers suggest parents.
ADHD is a neurobehavioral disorder of childhood, characterized with a wide range of problems like difficulty to concentrate, control impulsive behaviors and hyperactivity. According to an estimate from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in 11 children in US suffer from ADHD. It is mandatory to treat this disorder early as the disorder can negatively affect learning and academic development.
Efforts have been going on from a long time to find out possible reasons behind this occurrence. Researchers from Kennedy Krieger had earlier found children with ADHD having small caudate nucleus or a part of brain related to cognitive and motor control.
Meditation is considered to be one of the most effective methods for treating children with ADHD. William E. Pelham Jr. and colleagues analyzed distractions like TV and music on ADHD children's ability to focus in the classroom and found music having similar positive impact as meditation on children experiencing this disorder.
"If a kid says he can watch TV and focus, it's just not true. With television, we found out what we needed to know. But with music we actually discovered, in most cases, it didn't really affect the children," Pelham, director of FIU Center for Children and Families, said in a news release.
"And in some cases, we found listening to music helped the kids with ADHD to complete their work. Actually for this subgroup, the effect of music on them was nearly as effective as medication."
For proving their theory, investigators included male students with ADHD (both medicated and non-medicated) and male students without ADHD.
All the participants were given the freedom to choose their favorite music or video. The music selected for the study was mostly contemporary music, including rock and rap.
Pelham and team, at the end of their analysis found music helping some children with ADHD to concentrate.
"Rather than just assuming it's better for a child with ADHD to do their homework in complete silence, it may help their concentration to let them listen to music," Pelham said.
"If parents want to know if listening to music will help their child's performance in school, they should try it. In psychology, we have what we call single-subject-design studies. Basically, it's trial and error. If a child's performance improves after trying the music for a period of time, then that's a pretty good indicator that the child falls into the subgroup of children that benefit from music."
