Computer aided training of executive functions for elementary school-aged children

Symptoms of the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a very common and widespread mental health disease, are often recognizable at early age in childhood. Besides inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity in many cases, patients diagnosed with ADHD also suffer from deficits in executive functions (EFs). Consequences such as academic performance problems or bad emotional and family functioning are often related to these deficits. Unfortunately, ADHD interventions are often designed for adults and are therefore only restrictedly applicable to children.

Motivated by the insufficient therapy possibilities, the computerized training program JATEF (Java applet based Training of Executive Functions), which was developed within this master thesis, has its goal in helping elementary-school aged children by improving certain EFs. JATEF consists of several different tasks (templates existed in a pen and paper version for adults), which were jointly picked and adapted in cooperation with the Department for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Medical University of Vienna. On the one hand, it is of great importance to maintain the basic idea behind each task throughout the adaption process, but on the other hand, the children's acceptance of the design has to be ensured. This work has the following two main objectives: Firstly, modifying the tasks for the needs of children and secondly, exploring whether the modifications are sufficient for a use in child therapy. JATEF was developed in accordance to the principles of the software development model known as Evolutionary Prototyping. Thus, prototypes of the tasks enabled the possibility of obtaining user feedback early-on in the design phase. In addition, short development cycles, with conclusive meetings, lead to permanent upgrades and improvements. After completion of the final prototype, a user study with mental health professionals was conducted. The evaluation of this study revealed that the participants were pleased with the modern design and the universal applicability. Every task of JATEF proved to be easily understandable, simple to operate and, most importantly, suitable for children.