Elisa's Journal

I'm using the Play Attention method to help my two ADHD boys, and so far, it seems to be helping alot. I hope to have both off of medicine soon. What is it? It's a computer program designed at NASA that trains Air Force pilots and astronauts to maintain their focus for extended periods of time. It has five different games, each with its own purpose, many with increasingly difficult levels. Using a helmet with two sensors: one that measure attentional brain wave activity and another that measures cognitive processing activity, the child tries to use only his mind to manipulate screen characters. There are versions for both Mac and Windows. The first game helps sustain focus. The child can choose between two games here: making a bird soar or making a fish sink. As long as she focuses, the bird will climb and the fish will sink. When she zones out, even for a second, she'll see the fish climb and the bird sink. So for the first time, the child sees her inattention in real time. She sees that she and she alone in responsible for zoning out and for coming back into focus. She understands that she is in complete control, that her ADHD is not something that happens to her. If her cognitive activity is good, she feeds "power pills" to the bird or fish. The second game helps sustain visual tracking. This is important for sustaining focus while a teacher is talking and moving around the room and for tracking across the page or chalkboard while reading. The child can choose Hopper (a frog will hop around on a lily pad as long as she's "on task") or Skitter (this one's a bug on a leaf.) The third is Tower Builder. As long as the child pays attention, blocks will rise from the bottom and go on top of one another. As soon as she zones out, the block will freeze and then start to drift in reverse. There are three levels of difficulty. This game helps sustain focus and ability to complete a task. It is also used for "academic bridging" so that the child can transfer these hew skills to real life settings. In other words, she must build the tower while reading, doing math problems, listening to someone read, etc. The fourth game is Mind Maze. On the screen, there are four blocks of different colors. A different auditory tone will play when each block lights up in turn. Each block has its own tone. The child uses the arrow keys (which duplicates the exact layout of the four blocks) to copy the sequence of blocks that light up. First, they start with a series of two, then three, up to eight blocks in succession. Errors and length of blocks successfully memorzed are measured. This helps with sequential memory and auditory and visual discrimination. The last game helps with visual discrimination and impulsivity. The child is in a spacecraft being bombarded by asteroids. She must hit the spacebar as quickly as possible when she sees a white asteroid and refrain from hitting it when a red asteroid appears. Speed and accuracy are both measured. All data can be reviewed in text or graph format. The graph format can be seen in linear or curve form. You can even export data to Play Attention to get helpful feedback and suggestions. After a certain number of hours, they send the child various prizes for free. They have excellent tech support. Check it out on www.playattention.com!