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Game 4

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Game 4 – Monitor Lizard

Description:

This task requires kids to watch carefully as a lizard appears in various television screens ("monitors") associated with specific letters. The sequence of lizard appearances spells words needed to fill in coded messages.

In advanced rounds, the lizard's movements become quicker and a chicken occasionally appears as a distracter.

Skills Targeted:

The Monitor Lizard task targets short-term working memory and the ability to ignore distractions. Failure to maintain concentration and ignore distracters in the Monitor Lizard task may result in wrong answers.

Parents often report that kids with ADHD have difficulties attending to important cues and, as a result, seem to have difficulties remembering conversations and instructions from one day to the next. Parents also report that kids fail to write down important information.

Key Terms and Ideas:

In the game, kids can watch the clues for all of the words in the coded message before writing their answers, but the most effective strategy is to watch the clue and write the word one at a time. In this manner, the Monitor Lizard task mirrors the experience of notetaking; kids need to attend carefully to the presented materials before writing their answers, but they need to do so in a timely manner in order to be most effective. This is also true when kids have to find and write down school assignments that are due.

The best strategy for the kid with ADHD is to write down the information as soon as possible and not to assume that they will remember it later.