Effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy on sustained attention and working memory in children with Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder

The present research aimed to study the effect of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children and cognitive-behavioral play therapy on improving sustained attention and working memory in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest and two experimental group design. Fifty-nine children with attention-deficit disorder were selected based on sampling method available The study subjects were randomly divided into two experimental groups of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children and cognitive-behavioral play therapy (n=30 children/group). The employed inventories consisted of continues performance test (CPT) and Wechsler memory scale (W.M.S). The CPT test was presented in 1956 by Resold. It measures the sustained attention and impulsive control. Richio et al. (2017) expressed the reliability of this test 0.59 – 0.93. The Wechsler memory scale was published by Wechsler in 1945 and revised in 1987,1997, and in 2009. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient were expressed 0.92 for Wechsler memory scale by shadkami et al. (2012). The obtained data were analyzed by Repeated Measured using SPSS. The significance level was considered to be 0.05.

The present research results indicated that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children and cognitive-behavioral play significantly improved the sustained attention and working memory. There was no significant different between the effectiveness of provided intervention methods on sustained attention and working memory.

Based on the current research finding, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children and cognitive-behavioral play are effective methods to improve sustained attention and working memory in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.