Response Inhibition, Planning Skills and Speed Processing Training for Children with ADHD: Comparison between Cognitive-Motor Rehabilitation and Drug Therapy Approaches

Attention Deficit/ Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), as a neurodevelopmental disorder, accompanied not only with some special behavioral symptoms, but also deficits in cognitive functioning. Current research aimed to compare the effectiveness in improving executive functions (EF) in children with ADHD of cognitive-­motor rehabilitation (CMR) and drug therapy approaches. This was a semi-experimental study with post-test and follow-up assessments, comparing three groups in a single-blind design. 48 ADHD children were selected using criterion sampling, matched for ADHD severity, and randomly assigned to either cognitive-­motor rehabilitation (n= 16), drug therapy (n= 16) and active control (n=16) groups. All the participants were tested by Stroop color-word, Tower of London (TOL), Wechsler Coding tests, and a 3 sub-scale short-form of the WISC-R tests, and their parents rated them on child syndrome inventory-4 (CSI-4). The data were analyzed using MANOVA and paired t-tests with Bonferroni corrections as post hoc tests. CMR showed effective and enduring effects on the participant's performance on EF components including response inhibition, planning, and speed processing and only the improvements in speed processing returned significantly to lower levels at follow-up. In addition, despite the better performance of CMR group compared to drug therapy group, the changes were not statistically significant. Altogether, the results indicate that CMR is an effective approach in the treatment of ADHD, and it can be used as a complementary technique to drug therapy.