The Effect of Manipulation Activity of Vestibular System on The Visual Spatial Memory ‎of Hyperactive Children with Attention Deficit

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a chronic and common disorder in children. The disorder is characterized by inadequate levels of activity, uncontrolled behaviors, and memory impairment. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of manipulation of vestibular system activity on visual spatial memory of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity children.

24 children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity were participated in the present study. Participants were selected after completing the Conners’ teacher Questionnaire and Clinical interview with parents based on the inclusion criteria. Children were divided into two experimental and control groups. The present study tool was CBT (Corsi Block Test) to measure the visual spatial memory variable. Also, for the experimental group, 10 sessions of rotational, linear, balance and combination exercise were considered to enhance the activity of the vestibular system. Participants were placed in the pre-test and post-test sessions and their results were recorded. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 21 software.

The results of the present study showed that there was no significant difference between the scores of the groups in the visual memory space variable in the pre-test stage (p> 0.05). The analysis of variance with repeated measures showed that the main effect of the evaluation process (pre-test, post-test) is statistically significant (p <0.05). Also, the main effect of the group F (1.21) =4.93 was statistically significant. Comparison of the means showed that the subjects in the experimental group had a better visual memory score than the control group. The interactive effect of group × evaluation steps is also statistically significant. The results of the Bonfroni test showed that the mean score of the visual memory space of the experimental group in the post-test stage was better than the control group.

Therefore, it can be concluded that rotational, linear, balance and combination exercise improve the visual spatial memory in hyperactive children with attention deficit. Therefore, training based on increasing the activity of the vestibular system can be useful for improving the visual spatial memory of these children.