THE EFFECTS OF AUDITORY-STIMULATION ON THE ARITHMETIC PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN WITH ADHD AND NONDISABLED CHILDREN

This study evaluated the impact of extra-task stimulation on the acade mic task performance of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Twenty boys with ADHD and 20 nondisabled boys worked on an arithmetic task during high stimulation (music), low stimulation (speech), and no stimulation (silence). The music ''distractors'' wer e individualized for each child, and the arithmetic problems were at e ach child's ability level. A significant Group x Condition interaction was found for number of correct answers. Specifically, the nondisable d youngsters performed similarly under all three auditory conditions. In contrast, the children with ADHD did significantly better under the music condition than speech or silence conditions. However, a signifi cant Group x Order interaction indicated that arithmetic performance w as enhanced only for those children with ADHD who received music as th e first condition. The facilitative effects of salient auditory stimul ation on the arithmetic performance of the children with ADHD provide some support for the underarousal/optimal stimulation theory of ADHD.