Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
Brain training games make you better at the game. Sadly, that improvement tends to stay inside the game.
Sorting shapes faster or planning a conveyor belt more smoothly comes from learning the task, not from stretching a capacity, so the classroom and the workplace see none of it. If a child enjoys the game, let it be a game. Just do not let it occupy the place where an accommodation, a medication review or a supported routine should be.
Qur’an and Sunnah
man will only have what he has worked towards (Quran 53:39). Read closely, that is the whole difficulty here, since what you practise is what you get and nothing beyond it.
وَأَن لَّيۡسَ لِلۡإِنسَٰنِ إِلَّا مَا سَعَىٰ
that man will only have what he has worked towards
Qur’an 53:39read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analytic review of working memory training found gains on the trained tasks with no convincing transfer to attention, behaviour or school attainment. A randomised trial of Cogmed in school age children with ADHD pointed the same way: with a properly matched control condition, the training gave no advantage.
Melby-Lervåg M, Hulme C. (2013). Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review.. Developmental psychology doi
Chacko A, Bedard AC, Marks DJ, Feirsen N, Uderman JZ, Chimiklis A, Rajwan E, Cornwell M, Anderson L, Zwilling A, Ramon M. (2014). A randomized clinical trial of Cogmed Working Memory Training in school-age children with ADHD: a replication in a diverse sample using a control condition.. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Practice sharpens the exact thing you practised, and attention is not a single skill you can drill into the rest of life.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
If you are going to take supplements, it is worth paying a small subscription to a service that assays what is actually in them. ConsumerLab is one, at roughly sixty dollars a year.
Sensory processing difficulties are real and worth accommodating, and they are not a standalone diagnosis. The proposal for one was turned down for lack of evidence that it stands apart from the conditions it appears with.
With some sensory routines, the part doing the work may be a parent's steady hands and full attention rather than the technique itself. Worth knowing, because contact carries into the rest of the day and a protocol does not.