July 22, 2024
Children and adolescents with ADHD are known to have difficulties in relating to family members, peers, and teachers. Over the long run this can contribute to anxiety or even delinquency.
Several cognitive functions that allow individuals to process social information and interact with others contribute to shaping everyday social interactions. These include:
A European research team performed a systematic search of the peer-reviewed medical literature to conduct meta-analyses of ToM, Empathy, Facial and Non-Facial Emotion Recognition in children and adolescents with ADHD when compared to typical development. As a comparison measure, they also included Everyday Social Skills (using self, parent, teacher, or clinician questionnaires/interviews of social skills) as an outcome.
The search yielded 142 case-control studies (including dissertations) with a total of 16,283 participants.
Meta-analysis of 82 studies with a combined total of 10,770 participants found a very large effect size impairment in everyday social skills among children and adolescents with ADHD when compared with typically developing peers. Adjusting for covariates only strengthened the finding. There was no sign of publication bias.
This was mirrored in three out of five measures of social cognition:
The team concluded, “Our findings show that children and adolescents with ADHD have deficits in ToM, Facial Emotion Recognition, and Everyday Social Skills, three domains that warrant clinical attention.”
Belen Haza, Corentin J. Gosling, Flavia Ciminaghi, Laurence Conty, and Charlotte Pinabiaux, “Research Review: Social cognition and everyday social skills in children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a meta-analysis of case–control studies,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (2024), https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.14006.
A recent study published in Alpha Psychiatry sheds light on the connection between ADHD, empathy, and narcissistic traits. Researchers aimed to evaluate how pharmacological treatments—specifically psychostimulants—affect empathy deficits and pathological narcissism in adults with ADHD. These findings could have important implications for enhancing treatment outcomes and improving social functioning.
Study Overview
The study involved 75 adult ADHD patients who were treated with either methylphenidate or atomoxetine. Researchers assessed levels of narcissistic traits and empathy using validated tools such as the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) and the Empathy Quotient (EQ). Measurements were taken before treatment and after three months of therapy.
Key Findings
Why It Matters
Adults with ADHD often struggle with social interactions, partly due to empathy deficits and personality traits like narcissism. By addressing these challenges through psychostimulant treatment, patients may experience better social and emotional well-being. This study underscores the importance of viewing ADHD treatment as not just a way to manage symptoms but also a means to improve overall quality of life.Takeaway
Effective ADHD treatment goes beyond managing attention and hyperactivity. By improving empathy and reducing narcissistic traits, psychostimulants can foster healthier relationships and enhance social functioning. This research highlights the need for comprehensive care that considers the broader psychological and interpersonal effects of ADHD.
According to Fosco et al. (2019), “Inhibitory control has long been considered a central neurocognitive process in ADHD, with ADHD groups typically showing medium-sized impairments relative to their typically-developing peers on common inhibition paradigms.”
Learning to play a musical instrument requires effective coordination of physical movements and sound signals to produce music. Musical training involves repetitive practice, perfecting connections between perceptions, muscular actions, and cognition.
Noting that listening to music activates the brain’s reward circuits in both children and adults, that “Being internally motivated during learning experiences increases learning capacity and efficiency, and this greater engagement is reflected in increased electrical brain activity following musical training,” and that “Training music in a social environment increases positive feelings of bonding through shared emotions and group synchrony,” a Montreal-based research team carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed medical literature from 1980 to 2023 to learn what effect music training might have on inhibition control.
Outcomes:
The team found eight randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and 14 other longitudinal studies that met search criteria, including:
Meta-analysis of all 22 longitudinal studies with a combined total of 1,734 participants yielded a small-to-medium effect size improvement in inhibitory control. Variation (heterogeneity) in outcomes between individual studies was small, and there was no sign of publication bias. Restricting the analysis to the eight RCTs with a combined total of 641 participants, however, yielded a medium-to-large effect size improvement, with negligible heterogeneity, meaning the outcome was consistent across RCTs.
The Take-Away: The team concluded, “Music training plays a privileged role compared to other activities (sports, visual arts, drama) in improving children’s executive functioning, with a particular effect on inhibition control.” I cannot, however, recommend this as a therapy for ADHD until RCTs show it reduces symptoms of ADHD and/or real world impairments associated with the disorder.
Organic farming aims to protect biodiversity, promote animal welfare, and avoid using pesticides and fertilizers made from petrochemicals. Some pesticides are designed to target insects’ nervous systems but can also affect brain development and health in larger animals, including humans.
Many people believe organic food is healthier than conventionally produced food, which might be true for certain foods and health factors. But does eating organic food during pregnancy impact the chances of a child developing ADHD or autism spectrum disorder (ASD)?
In Norway, researchers can use detailed national health records to study these connections on a population-wide level, thanks to the country’s single-payer healthcare system and national registries.
The Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) invites parents to participate voluntarily and has a 41% participation rate. The study includes:
For this research, a team tracked 40,707 mother-child pairs from children born between 2002 and 2009. They used questionnaires to measure how much organic food mothers consumed during pregnancy. ADHD and ASD symptoms in children were assessed using validated rating scales.
The final analysis included:
The researchers adjusted for factors like maternal age, education, previous pregnancies, BMI before pregnancy, smoking and alcohol use during pregnancy, birth year and season, and the child’s sex.
The researchers concluded that eating organic food during pregnancy has no meaningful effect on the likelihood of a child developing ADHD or ASD. They stated, “The results do not indicate any clinically significant protective or harmful effects of eating organic food during pregnancy on symptoms of ADHD and ASD in the offspring. Based on these findings, we do not recommend any specific advice regarding intake of organic food during pregnancy.”
_logo%201.svg)
