The Effectiveness of Cognitive Training Program on Cognitive Skills and ADHD Symptoms in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a cognitive training program in individuals with ADHD. The participants included 38 ADHD children who were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group practiced with the CogniPlus training programs for 27 sessions, while the control group practiced their routine educational activities. The ‘Tehran-Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale’-Fifth Edition (SB5) and the ‘Child Behavior Checklist’ (CBCL) served as the data collection tools for determining the benefits of the cognitive training program on cognitive skills and ADHD symptoms. The findings revealed improvement in the experimental group’s visuospatial skills, such that these skills were maintained over a 1-month follow up period (p<0.05). The experimental group’s visuospatial skills had increased from (M=95.63, S=12.30) in the pretest to (M=103.52, S=8.51) in the intervention phase, as opposed to the control group in which scores did not show significant changes from pretest (M=96.68, S=11.88) to post-test (M=98.26, S=10.75). Statistical analyses did not reveal significant differences between the two groups’ performances in other cognitive skills, such as: Fluid Reasoning, Knowledge, Quantitative Reasoning, and Working Memory. Moreover, the severity of ADHD symptoms did not change from pre-test to post-test. Cognitive training may enhance certain cognitive skills in ADHD individuals, but more research is required to generalize the positive effects of these programs to the other clinical features of ADHD.