Drug Effects on Learning in Children A Selective Review of the Past Thirty Years
IThis study was supported In part by U.S. Children’s Bureau Grant $416. a Personnel Training Grant for Handicapped Children. With increasing publicity about pharmacologic means of improving or enhancing learning and memory, there is a natural interest on the part of special educators in the possible application of “psychoactive” drugs to the educational problems of the handicapped child. Public and professional alike have been exposed to news releases heralding the advent of new pharmacologic agents that will modify learning disabilities or otherwise enhance school performance. The genuine successes of psychopharmacology in adult psychiatry suggest that these expectations may not be altogether in vain. It is not uncommon for teachers, school counsellors, principals, and school psychologists to suggest or even request a trial of medication to alter a recalcitrant child’s behavior, improve his attention span or emotional control, or reduce his distractibility or his hyperactivity. Improvement, and sometimes deterioration, in behavior are attributed by school personnel to the “drug” that a certain child may be taking. However, criticism of educators for viewing drugs as ready .solutions to learning problems or as dramatic agents of behavioral change is hardly equitable. Physicians not infrequently submit to an anxious patient’s request for useless or even potentially harmful drugs. The purpose of this article is to review drug research with children over the past 30 years, to acquaint the reader with some of the very complex methodological problems in psychopharmacologic research, particularly as it pertains to learning, and to clarify the current status of research and clinical practice with children so that drug reports and claims may be more critically assessed.