Movement Patterns in Students Diagnosed with ADHD, Objective Measurement in a Natural Learning Environment

Abstract

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is the most common neuropsychological disorder in childhood and adolescence, affecting the basic psychological processes involved in learning, social adaptation and affective adjustment. From previous research, the disorder is linked to problems in different areas of development, with deficiencies in psychological processes leading to the development of the most common characteristics of the disorder such as inattention, excess of activity and lack of inhibitory control. As for the diagnosis, in spite of being a very frequent disorder, there are multiple controversies about which tools are the most suitable for evaluation. One of the most widespread tools in the professional field is behavior inventories such as the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires for Parents and Teachers or the ADHD Rating Scale-V. The main disadvantage of these assessment tools is that they do not provide an objective observation. For this reason, there are different studies focused on recording objective measures of the subjects’ movement, since hyperkinesia is one of the most characteristic symptoms of this disorder. In this sense, we have developed an application that, using a Kinect device, is capable of measuring the movement of the different parts of the body of up to six subjects in the classroom, being a natural context for the student. The main objective of this work is twofold, on the one hand, to investigate whether there are correlations between excessive movement and high scores in the inventories for the diagnosis of ADHD, Rating Scale-V and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and, on the other hand, to determine which sections of the body present the most significant mobility in subjects diagnosed with ADHD. Results show that the control group, composed of neurotypical subjects, presents less kinaesthetic activity than the clinical group diagnosed with ADHD. This indicates that the experimental group presents one of the main characteristics of the disorder. In addition, results also show that practically all the measured body parts present significant differences, being higher in the clinical group, highlighting the head as the joint with the highest effect size.