REDUCING HYPERACTIVITY WITH A FEEDBACK ACTIGRAPH

This application addresses the need for an alternative to pharmacological treatment of children diagnosed with ADHD (and other conditions that may present motoric excess). Technological enhancements to the Phase I Feedback Actigraph, now referred to as BuzzBee¿, will allow multiple activity recorders (belt-worn by ADHD diagnosed children) equipped with vibrotactile, auditory, and visual feedback to be controlled via telemetry by a teacher and/or school psychologist. Phase I results pointed out the need for remote handling of the device in order to minimize child embarrassment and teacher workload in a mainstream classroom. This project seeks to provide definitive proof as to the efficacy of this behavioral management technique by employing measures that have been successfully employed in the validation of pharmacological therapies for the same population. A single blind crossover design varying activity contingent, and sham feedback will utilize a combination of teacher rating scales and time-on-task measurements. In addition, we are including two state-of-the-art measures for demonstrating efficacy on a subset of subjects, the OPTAx and fMRI. OPTAx involves a high precision optical measurement of head movement in three dimensions during the performance of cognitive tests, while fMRI measures blood flow in an area of the brain linked to ADHD.