Effectiveness of Yoga Practice on Visual and Auditory Attention of Children with Attention Deficiency and Hyperactivity Disorders

  Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents. This disorder causes various problems such as impairment of visual and auditory attention that play important roles in everyday life. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of yoga training on visual and auditory attention of children with ADHD. A total of 30 male students, aged 6-7 years, were randomly selected using the teacher form of Child Symptom Inventory-4 (CSI-4) from shiraz’s primary schools. Participants were assigned to two groups of experimental and control with the experimental group (n=15) receiving Yoga exercise practices for 12 sessions (4 weeks and 3 sessions per week, 60 minutes per session), while the control group did not receive any intervention. Before and after training, all participants were assessed using Continuous Performance Test (CPT). Multiple ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The results showed that yoga exercises were able to significantly increase visual (P=0.002) and auditory (P=0.003) attention performance in children with ADHD in comparison with the control group. Yoga practices can improve attention performance in children with ADHD.