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A small-scale study conducted in 2015 suggested that music can help with the symptoms of inattention in ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).
In 2015, Luiz Rogério Jorgensen Carrer from the Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), in São Paulo, Brazil developed simple sound and musical tasks to evaluate and correlate the performance of children with ADHD, compared to a control group with typical development.
The study involved 36 participants in São Paulo, aged between 6–14 years-old. The clinical sample consisted of 24 children with ADHD, subdivided into two subgroups: Group 1 – no medication (ADHD/NM) at least a week before the test; Group 2 – medication (ADHD/M) for at least 30 days before the test. The control group consisted of 12 children with typical development without symptoms of inattention or hyperactivity, normal hearing and no health impairments.
Tasks were divided into sections: spontaneous time production, time estimation with simple sounds, and time estimation with music. Data was collected through a musical keyboard using Logic Audio Software 9.0 on the computer that recorded the participant’s performance in the tasks.
People with ADHD can seem restless, may have trouble concentrating and may act on impulse. Music, with its playful, spontaneous, affective, motivational, temporal, and rhythmic dimensions is a helpful tool for studying the aspects of time processing in ADHD.
While the performance of the ADHD groups in temporal estimation of simple sounds in short time intervals (30 milliseconds) were statistically lower than that of control group; in the task comparing musical excerpts of the same duration (7 seconds), the ADHD groups considered the tracks longer when the musical notes had longer durations, while in the control group, the duration was related to the density of musical notes in the track.
Luiz Carrer believes that the positive average performance by the three groups in most tasks shows the possibility that music can, in some way, positively modulate the symptoms of inattention in ADHD.
SOURCES:
Frontiers in Psychiatry: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00127/full
National Library of Medicine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4585247/
DETAILS:
| BENEFIT: | IMPROVED ATTENTION & TIME PROCESSING |
| TARGET GROUP: | CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE |
| AGE: | 6-14 YEARS-OLD |
| MUSIC TYPE: | GENERAL |
| TYPE OF STUDY: | ACADEMIC RESEARCH |
| NOs INVOLVED: | 36 |
| PERIOD OF STUDY: | UNKNOWN |
| DATE: | 2015 |
| PLACE: | BRAZIL |
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