Listening to White Noise Improved Verbal Working Memory in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Pilot Study

I-Chen Chen, Hsun-Yu Chan, Keh-Chung Lin, Yu-Ting Huang, Pei-Luen Tsai and Yen-Ming Huang
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I-Chen Chen: Department of Occupational Therapy, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Da-Yeh University, Changhua 515006, Taiwan
Hsun-Yu Chan: Department of Industrial Education, College of Technology and Engineering, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 106308, Taiwan
Keh-Chung Lin: School of Occupational Therapy, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei 100025, Taiwan
Yu-Ting Huang: Department of Music, College of Human Ecology, Shih Chien University, Taipei 104336, Taiwan
Pei-Luen Tsai: Department of Occupational Therapy, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701401, Taiwan
Yen-Ming Huang: Graduate Institute of Clinical Pharmacy, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei 100025, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 12, 1-9

Abstract: Existing research demonstrates that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) underperform in cognitive tasks involving working memory (WM) due to hypo-arousal, which has led to the development of arousal regulation models to determine proper levels of arousal and optimal cognitive outcomes. The present study focuses on investigating the effects of external auditory stimuli on verbal WM in children with ADHD. Thirteen children with ADHD (aged 6–10 years old) and thirteen age- and gender-matched children with typical development (TD) completed the verbal WM task when listening to no sound, white noise, or pleasant music. A two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to compare the verbal WM performance between groups in the three auditory conditions. Children with ADHD showed the best verbal WM performance when listening to white noise and the worst performance when listening to no sound. Yet, children with TD performed the best in the no-sound condition and the worst in the white noise condition. Our findings suggest auditory white noise is beneficial for ideal arousal regulation and cognitive performance involving verbal WM for children with ADHD and support the moderate brain arousal model. Providing external white noise is a non-invasive and cost-effective approach to improving verbal WM in children with ADHD in real-world contexts.

Keywords: ADHD; working memory; arousal; white noise; moderate brain arousal model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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