Computerised attention training for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities: a randomised controlled trial

Abstract

The findings suggest that attention training may enhance some aspects of attention (selective attention) in children with IDD, but the small to medium effect sizes indicate that further refinement of the training programme is needed to promote larger, more global improvements.

Feasibility of remotely supervised transcranial direct current stimulation and cognitive remediation: A systematic review

“…Many studies supported the feasibility of remotely supervised tDCS [25,26,32,36,39,41,42] and found it to be well tolerated [22,25,36,39,41], easy to use and safe [38,39]. High compliance rates (80% or higher) were noted in nine studies [32,36,39,41,[43][44][45][46][47]. Only one study noted generally poor compliance rates and a high dropout rate [48], and two other studies noted participants training less than desired [49], or not always following the protocol [50].…”

“…Training and guidance. Participant training ranged in duration and intensity and consisted of no training and self-guided treatment (n = 4/24) [44,47,51,58], having one session of training in a group or alone (n = 6/24) [26,43,46,48,53,54], weekly training [50], observational training [27,28,59] or training on an as-needed basis [52]. Training generally involved printed instruction sheets and recommended strategies for daily activities, which were explained prior to starting the intervention [60], education surrounding the human brain, cognition and how cognition affects daily functioning [43,48], educational handbooks, worksheets and information about compensatory strategies [48], as well as the protocol for the computer software [56].…”

“…Fidelity monitoring. Most research provided ongoing monitoring and support by a study technician (n = 20/24 studies) [24,26,29,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,[54][55][56][57][58][59][60]. Software programs that allowed for monitoring/real time feedback were utilized in most studies (n = 14/24) [24, 26, 44-52, 55, 56, 60].…”

“…Software programs that allowed for monitoring/real time feedback were utilized in most studies (n = 14/24) [24, 26, 44-52, 55, 56, 60]. Check-ins were also quite common (n = 16/24 studies) [24,26,44,45,46,48,49,50,51,52,[54][55][56][57][58][59], and were completed primarily through phone or email at least once a week (n = 7/24) [24,43,45,46,51,55,57]. Other studies used video conferencing multiple times a week [44], or had study staff meet with participants once a week Effectiveness of remote delivery of cognitive remediation and cognitive training.…”

“…Only one study did not find improvements in cognition, however, they did find statistically significant improvements within activities of daily living performance for stroke patients with cognitive impairments [60]. Many studies found that improvements in areas of cognition persisted at least 3-9 months post-intervention (n = 5/24) [27,46,47,49,57]. Improvements in cognition were also found to be positively correlated with quality of life (n = 3/24) [48,50,57].…”